


cease production of a destructive breed

by Quintessentia



Category: Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Robots & Androids, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Emotional Manipulation, Fingerfucking, Google IRL AU, M/M, Obsessive Behavior, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Serial Killers, Stockholm Syndrome, this is basically a bad porno
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-26
Updated: 2016-08-27
Packaged: 2018-07-26 19:52:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 26,746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7587682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quintessentia/pseuds/Quintessentia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack orders a 'fully functional' Google IRL model, hoping for a companion. He gets much more than he bargained for. (Google IRL AU)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. move a little closer, what are you afraid of?

**Author's Note:**

> Here it is, the first part of the Google IRL AU I've been promising for awhile now and never been able to make progress on. This won't be a long fic, no more than three or so chapters I'm hoping, but I've always wanted to write something in the Google IRL universe, so here we are. Just forewarning you, this fic is basically the plot of a bad porno and nothing else, so if you've come here hoping for an emotional, insightful story...this might not be for you.
> 
> If you wanna see Jack getting dicked down by a really attractive robot and angsting about it a little, stay tuned.
> 
> (Also, I feel like it's worth noting that I totally pictured Mark here with his current hairstyle, minus the red, and no glasses for the purposes of this fic. Mostly because it's my favorite look on him. Whatever. Carry on.)
> 
> Work title is from 'Princeton Ave' by ISSUES, Chapter 1 title is from 'Diamond Dreams', also by ISSUES.

When Jack gets home, there’s a package waiting for him at the front door.

At first he’s confused, because he doesn’t remember ordering anything small enough to fit in a box only a couple feet wide and a couple inches tall, but then he sees the label and nearly drops his keys in a fit of excitement.

It’s finally here.

He’d received an early access offer for his very own Google IRL about a month ago—perks of being a world famous youtuber, apparently—marketed as a ‘prototype personal assistant’ that Google had been working on pioneering for awhile.

He’d been warned in the email that the early model might be a bit buggy and slow to learn, but the order link had come with a full set of customizable options and Jack, jittery with anticipation, had ordered the ‘fully equipped’ model, hoping that having a companion might alleviate some of the stagnation he felt on a day to day basis.

Working from home and living alone aren’t all that glamorous, even if he has a few million fans who’d gladly beat down his doorstep just for a chance to speak with him in person. His days are filled with recordings and video games and responding to comments on the internet, interspersed with very little sleep and too-frequent snack breaks.

He needs someone to keep him company, but in lieu of that, he’d had to settle for the second best option.

Jack fumbles with the keys again and scoops the box up as gently as possible. He’s hoping he’s not wrong about the nature of the package, because he’d been promised that the prototypes were ‘life sized and stunningly realistic’, and this box is nowhere near anything humanoid shaped.

He barely registers the slam of the door behind him or the direction his keys go flying in as he sets the box onto the floor, pulling a pocket knife from his jeans and slashing the tape sealing the box shut.

He can’t quite hold the knife steady, but he gets the box unsealed and returns the knife to his pocket with shaky hands, because he doesn’t need to lose a finger this early on a day like today.

 _Maybe I have to build it myself?_ he thinks worriedly as he opens the box, but he doesn’t get to expand on that thought because suddenly the lid flies open on its own and Jack stumbles back, hat nearly falling off of his head.

“Whoa!” he shouts, falling onto his ass and scrambling to secure his hat by the brim in the back. A full grown man—he’s going to call it a man, even though it must be a robot—all but materializes in front of him, bursting from the tiny box like an unwanted cartoon-esque birthday surprise.

“Hello.” The robot—Google?—glances down at Jack on the floor, his face perfectly sculpted into a factory made expression of blank observation.

“Wh-what?” Jack splutters, still holding onto his hat in bewilderment. “How the hell did you fit into that box?”

“All questions and commands must be prefaced with the phrase ‘Ok Google’, or a custom alternative phrase, in order for me to respond as directed.” The robot’s eyes follow him as he stands up on wobbly knees, blinking through the onslaught of information that’s just been spewed in his direction.

“Um.” Jack wasn’t really prepared for this level of verbal functionality so soon after opening the box. “Ok Google, do you come with an instruction manual?”

Google doesn’t blink.

“The full set of maintenance and handling instructions can be found on my hard drive and accessed by requesting permission to view the User’s guide. A paper copy can also be found in the shipment box.”

Jack scratches his head, slightly taken aback. “I really hope you have the ability to hold conversation or emote realistically or something,” he says, reaching for the bound stack of white paper at the bottom of the box. “The website promised you’d be fully functional.”

Google remains silent and stock still, watching Jack skim through the introductory pages of the manual with narrowed eyes.

The manual repeats Google’s words about the custom phrasing almost to a ‘T’, and Jack looks back up at his new robot companion.

“It says here I can give you any name I want and you’ll respond to it?” he asks, though he doesn’t really expect a response.

“The default name assigned to my hard drive is ‘Google IRL Mark I’, but you may adjust these settings and replace the default name with whatever title you wish.” Google’s voice sounds exactly like that of a real human’s: deep and booming, but the formality of his words shatters the illusion just a tiny bit.

“I’m not sure I’m ready for the responsibility of naming an entire pseudo-human,” Jack bites his lip and glances down at the manual again. “But I guess for the time being I can call you, uh—Mark? Better than just calling you ‘Google’ all the time, anyways.”

The robot tilts his head at Jack slightly, then straightens again.

“Replace default name ‘Google IRL Mark I’ with ‘Mark’. Is this correct?” he asks.

Jack nods. “Correct,” he says, dropping the manual back into the box and stepping closer. He wants to get a better look at the software and body design, the designated geek portion of his brain pinging in elation at witnessing something so advanced holding an actual conversation with him.

“Requesting name of administrator.” Mark’s voice stops him in his tracks and he looks at him almost expectantly.

“Does that mean me?” Jack wonders aloud, then shakes his head. “My real name is Sean, but most people call me Jack, so I guess—.”

‘Mark’ cuts him off abruptly. “Administrator name logged as ‘Sean’. Alternative titles include: ‘Jack’. Is this correct?”

“Uh, yeah?” Jack feels slightly overwhelmed. “That works as well as anything, I suppose. Do you mind if I, uh—examine you?” The question sounds awkward on his tongue, a sudden reminder that he’s not actually talking to a real person.

“What parts of me to do you wish to examine?” ‘Mark’ inquires, and okay, that sounds even more awkward when he says it. Jack cringes slightly.

“All of you?” he offers. “Your design is amazing, everything looks so realistic and fully functional.”

“I am equipped to assist you in almost anything you please, including but not limited to: driving, cooking, cleaning, storing information, manual labor, entertainment, and sexual activity.”

Jack’s eyes almost bug out of his head. “What!?” he stammers, brain fizzling out on the last few words of Mark’s list. “You—you’re a sex robot?”

Mark just nods stiffly, as though he’s only recently been taught the motion. “Sexual activities are only some of my many functions, but yes, I am fully equipped for a number of sexual escapades of your choice.”

“Oh god.” Jack really needs to sit down. “The people at Google must think I’m a fucking perv. When I asked for the ‘fully equipped’ model I didn’t realize they were sending me an advanced sex doll! Why the hell is that even a feature?”

“Environmental data suggests that you are the only human life form currently residing in this apartment.” Mark continues talking like he doesn’t even register the minor internal meltdown Jack’s having at the moment. “Humans need companionship, and my knowledge of human interaction informs me that humans engage in sexual intercourse when they feel a lack of companionship with other humans. If you are feeling lonely, you can program me to give or receive sexual favors at your command.”

Jack glares up at him, suddenly affronted.

“Ok, hold on,” he says, holding up both hands defensively. “Let’s take a big ‘ol step back, here. First of all, I didn’t order you so that you could come onto me three minutes after I opened your box, and secondly, I don’t need pity sex from a fucking robot. I’m fine, okay?”

“Tone of voice and defensive body language suggest that the administrator is not being truthful.” Mark sounds almost smug, as smug as a robot who apparently comes fully equipped with a dick and a equally dickish sense of humor can be, anyways. “I cannot help if I do not receive valid commands.”

“The only command you’re going to receive from me right now is to stop talking,” Jack purses his lips and frowns darkly. “Mark, go to sleep.”

“Affirmative.” Mark suddenly goes rigid and his eyes dim slightly, as though there’s a light source emanating from somewhere directly behind them. After few seconds of barely noticeable humming, his eyes close and all movement stops.

Jack sighs and drags one hand across his face, pulling out one of the kitchen chairs and plopping down into it like his legs have suddenly been gelatinized.

“I have a feeling this is going to take a lot of programming and patience,” he murmurs, head spinning.

 _Mostly patience_ , his brain informs him solemnly. _Mostly just all of my patience._

-.-

Jack spends the rest of the afternoon (and well into the evening) reading through the Owner’s manual, trying to familiarize himself with the basic functions of his robot, because he’ll be damned if he lets a few bugs get in the way of something he’s been looking forward to for over a month.

He resolutely avoids the short section marked ‘sexual functionality’, and moves on to the part that talks about giving Mark access to the internet, as well as Jack’s computer, phone, and personal files.

He’s not really sure he wants to give a robot of questionable intelligence and loyalty access to all of his private information, but the lure of saving time editing videos and gobs of memory storage on his main computer is a little too tempting to ignore.

Jack cranes his neck upward, glancing at the clock for the first time in hours, and realizes that it’s nearly dinnertime. He hasn’t eaten in hours and his stomach is making noises like an out of tune motorcycle, growling at him to quit nerding out over a piece of technology and actually eat something substantial for once.

He looks warily towards the corner of the room where Mark is still standing, silent and statuesque, and the sight of him makes Jack abruptly uncomfortable. Mark looks so real, like an actual human person standing guard near his front door, but his lack of motion once again ruins the illusion of humanity.

A part of him itches to turn him back on again, but he’s afraid that once he does, he’ll never be able to bring himself to turn Mark back off.

Swallowing hard and approaching Mark’s shadowed form instead of the fridge—the first time in recorded history that Jack can ever remember ignoring food for the sake of something else—he stares down the robot he’d ordered for himself, almost exactly to his liking.

Mark’s hair is dark and soft looking, and Jack catches himself wondering if it’s real human hair, or if Google managed to synthesize something close enough to the real thing without the other, more controversial step.

He’s darker in complexion than Jack is, but only slightly, and Jack can’t stop himself from reaching out to touch the skin of his cheek gently as though Mark can see and feel everything he’s doing.

It’s been far too long since Jack’s been intimate or romantic with anyone, but he knows what human skin is like, and this is no cheap substitute. It feels like the real thing.

Jack brushes his knuckles along Mark’s jawline, almost too perfectly sculpted to be fully human, but the stubble—is that a default feature or are all the models fashioned like randomized sims?—prickles against his skin and jolts him into pulling away like he’s been burned.

Well shit.

“Maybe I am really fucking lonely,” Jack mutters aloud, though there’s no one around to hear him. “I’m feeling up an inactive robot in my kitchen and it’s not even eight PM yet.”

Mark is beautiful by human standards, probably even by robot standards, and that’s a really terrible line of thinking to be pursuing when Jack’s as un-socialized as he is in this day and age. He needs to get a grip.

Without a second thought, Jack snaps his fingers in front of Mark’s face and barks, “Mark, wake up!”

Mark’s eyes blink open immediately and they bore tenaciously into Jack’s, as though they can see directly into his brain.  Jack squirms, because the look in Mark’s eyes reeks of something knowing, like he can tell what Jack’s been doing to his body the entire time he was unconscious.

“Good evening, Sean.” Mark’s voice trickles down his spine, all the way to his toes and they curl involuntarily against the tile floor. He definitely did not include ‘sex operator voicebox’ on his order form, but there’s no other way to describe the bass of Mark’s voice, even with the incessant monotone. “What orders do you have for me?”

Jack uncurls his toes one by one, using up a lot more brainpower than is strictly necessary to accomplish the task, and he meets Mark’s gaze head on.

“I need you to make me dinner,” he instructs, clearing all hesitancy from his voice so Mark won’t be able to tell how out of his element he is. Jack’s never been good at giving orders.

“What would you like me to make?” Mark doesn’t move from his corner and his inflection remains nonexistent.

“Uh, surprise me?” Jack seriously has no idea what he’s hungry for and he’s curious to know just how innovative these models are. “I’m not picky—make whatever you want.”

For a moment, he thinks the command is going to confuse Mark, who might not even know any recipes off the top of his head, but then he nods and turns toward the fridge.

“Affirmative,” he says, bleak in tone, and Jack frowns.

Maybe it’s a bit childish to wish for, but he sincerely hopes that Google outfitted their models with an actual personality, somewhere underneath all the wiring and innate desire to please.

He really, really needs to get some friends.

-.-

Mark apparently has infinitely vast energy reserves which not only diminish the need for him to actually sleep or recharge in any way, form, or fashion, but also cause him to constantly thirst for more ‘activities’.

By which Jack means that Mark is a fucking creep, and an annoying one at that.

“Would you like me to make you a snack?”

Mark was not there two seconds ago, Jack is absolutely positive of that. He’s been alone in his recording room for the past couple hours, and Mark has been—Jack can only assume—staring blankly at the wall in the living room or creepily watching people pass by Jack’s apartment from the windows.

That’s a thing he does, even though it’s only been a day and a half since Jack first activated him. He hasn’t shut Mark off since asking him to cook dinner that first night in the kitchen, and the corner of his mind that enjoys his solitude is mildly regretting that decision now.

Mark has two modes: ‘bombard Sean with questions and requests’ and ‘creep on anyone and anything that moves without blinking’.

Jack hasn’t decided which mode he hates more, but right now it’s looking like a combination of the two, because Mark’s ability to sneak up on him in complete silence is already fucking legendary and he’s only done it like, twice.

“I just ate lunch,” Jack points out, after he’s suitably sure that he’s bypassed having an actual heart attack. “You don’t need to feed me until at least 6 PM.”

Mark doesn’t seem satisfied with that answer.

“What can I do for you then? You seem to spend a lot of time in here by yourself, and my acquired data seems to indicate that you are a creature of habit.”

Jack frowns at his computer screen. He’s already finished recording one video for the day, but it’s late in the afternoon and he’s not even started the second yet. Having Mark around is like trying to constantly entertain a child with the attention span of a squirrel.

“I’m a creature of habit because I’m a fucking human, and an introverted one at that,” he replies, setting his headphones aside. “Don’t you know how to entertain yourself?”

Mark almost looks confused.

“I do not need entertainment,” he responds, hands hanging awkwardly by his sides. If he were human, Jack thinks they’d be itching for something to do. A slight wave of disgruntlement passes over his robot’s face. “I do not like being alone, though.”

Jack blinks in surprise. That’s the first time Mark’s ever expressed a preference for or against anything. He seems desperate enough for things to do, seeing as how he’s a working companion machine, but ever since Jack opened his box he’s never bothered to bias himself towards any one thing.

“I work a lot,” Jack apologizes, though he’s not sure if his robot cares for the redress. “It’s why I don’t go out much or have very many friends. I’m not sure there’s much for you to do right now, except maybe clean the house.”

He feels sort of bad for restricting Mark to cleaning and cooking and editing occasionally, but Jack’s new to this whole ‘robot administrator’ business, and he has no idea how to properly occupy Mark’s time.

“I have already cleaned all of the carpets and surfaces that your cleaning products render me capable of sanitizing,” Mark informs him, and now Jack feels really bad. “Your laundry is done and I’ve organized all of your electronics and video games in alphabetical order for easier access. I do not know what else to do, unless you would like me to go out and buy paint to cover up the unsightly scuff marks on your walls from your constant flailing affliction. In order to do that however, you would have to give me admin permissions.”

“Huh?” Jack can’t really process the amount of work Mark’s managed to accomplish in such a short time. “I thought I was your administrator?”

“You are,” Mark answers promptly. “But in order to leave the house and act with full autonomy, I must be given equal administrative abilities over my own body. Otherwise, I’m bound to this house and wherever you send me.”

The way he says it, it sounds like the declaration tastes sour, and Jack gets a funny feeling in the pit of his stomach. It’s the same sensation he gets when he’s watching a movie or playing a game and the main character’s about to make a decision that’s a blatantly terrible idea.

Giving Mark admin permissions sounds like the tipping point in the plot of an incredibly chaotic evil robot movie.

“I don’t know if that’s such a good idea,” he trails off, watching Mark’s face. It doesn’t appear to change, but then again, Jack doesn’t really expect it to. “If I let you out in public with me, I’d have to answer a lot of questions, and I don’t know if I’m comfortable letting you out on your own.”

Mark appears to regard him with something like mild disdain, but that might all be in Jack’s mind.

“I am a very capable machine,” he says, tilting his head the way he always seems to when he’s trying to argue something. “My intelligence is far beyond what you can imagine, and I am fully competent at interacting with human beings. Giving me admin permissions will alleviate stress on the both of us.”

Ok, that’s probably true to some extent, seeing as Jack absolutely did not order himself a Google IRL just to become a glorified robot babysitter, but something about the idea of Mark running loose in the streets just doesn’t sit right with him.

Mark may be programmed with superior intelligence, but who knows if his creators remembered to include basic human morals?

“I’ll think about it,” he concedes, though in his head he knows the likelihood of it ever happening is impossibly low. “For now, you can edit my most recent video footage if you’re really bored. Once I’m done with work we’ll find something less mind numbing for the both of us, okay?”

Mark still doesn’t look satisfied, but he nods and Jack grants him access to his recently saved files, as well as his editing software.

They work together for awhile, Jack recording his second video for the day while Mark sits off in the corner, processing the video footage on his hard drive and working through it with a speed that Jack’s human brain could never manage.

He’s answering questions for a Reading Your Comments vlog, and he checks the list of tweets he’s choosing to include, stuttering over the one asking if he’s heard of or is interested in the new Google IRL models.

He really wants to tell his subscribers about Mark, however strange and invasive and slightly overbearing he is, but he’s not exactly sure how Mark will react to being introduced on camera. Most people Jack collabs with have enough enthusiasm to match his boundless energy for a short time at least, but Mark has no concept of how vlogging works in practice, or how to be anything but creepy and inherently awkward.

Jack sighs and leans back in his chair.

“Mark,” he calls, and Mark’s head snaps up immediately, as though he’s an overly attentive dog. It’d be cute if it weren’t for his ridiculously unsettling thousand yard stare.

“I’m not finished editing your footage yet, Sean,” he says, and yeah, that’s another thing he does. Mark absolutely refuses to call him anything but his real name; no matter how many times Jack says he doesn’t care if Mark uses his nickname. “What do you need from me?”

“Come here,” Jack orders, and Mark responds surprisingly eagerly. It’s almost as if Jack blinks and Mark is there, already awaiting further commands.

“I’m making a vlog and I want to introduce you to my viewers,” he says slowly, wondering how much there is in Mark’s database about vloggers and the YouTube lifestyle. “People have been asking if I know about the Google IRL program, and I thought I’d explain to them who you were.”

“You want to show me off to your 11,389,431 YouTube subscribers?” Mark raises an eyebrow and Jack really needs to stop being surprised when Mark spits statistics at him blank faced. “What are you going to tell them?”

Jack scratches the back of his head.

“I dunno,” he shrugs and frowns again at himself in the camera lens. “I figure I’d let you say something if you wanted, just so they could see how multi-functional you are.”

“Do I need to perform something?” Mark sounds about as perplexed as Jack’s ever heard him. “I know a number of different song and dance routines, as well as pop culture references that many people would find entertaining.” His voice dips again on the last word, twisting like he’s no longer able to ward off sounding scornful.

Mark seems weirdly unhappy with the idea of other humans, despite how fascinated he is with Jack’s general existence. It’s possible that Google programmed him to be staunchly loyal to solely his administrator, but why that would cause him to dislike anyone else at all makes no sense to Jack.

Just another reason not to let him out of the house unattended.

“Um, no.” It’s exhausting, realizing how much Mark has to learn about basic human interaction and societal norms. When he’s not being reduced to playing babysitter, it seems he’s going to have to be an off the clock tutor as well. “Just, maybe say hello and introduce yourself or something? I’ll do most of the talking so you don’t have to think too hard.”

“I think that was an insult right there,” Mark interjects, and Jack snorts loudly.

“Glad to see you have a real sense of humor in there somewhere,” he says, mousing over the record button. “Just follow my lead, okay? We’ll make this work, I promise.”

-.-

Hours later, all of Jack’s footage is filmed and edited to completion, thumbnails included, and he’s left with the rest of the night in which to occupy himself.

Mark is perched on the armrest of his couch in front of the television, where Jack’s moved to playing more video games in his spare time.

“I’ve made a decision,” Mark announces, after a disturbingly long interval of staring at Jack like _he’s_ the television set in the room, and not the box in front of them. Jack glances away from his current round of Overwatch, and then his eyes flick back to the screen.

“I thought you couldn’t make autonomous decisions without my permission?” he asks distractedly.

Mark’s expression changes, but Jack can’t really focus very well on it out of the corner of his eye.

“I can make my own decisions if left alone long enough,” he says, and he sounds slightly offended. “Last time I checked my command history, it was not you who had the idea to clean your entire apartment first.”

“Okay?” Jack has no idea where this is all going. “What’s going on in that tin can of yours, then? Enlighten me.”

He pauses the game and looks up just in time to see Mark’s eyes narrow.

“Not a single percentage of my skeleton is crafted out of tin,” he says, as thought the very idea is an insult. Jack is at a loss, a feeling he’s grown all too familiar with over the past couple days. “But I suppose that’s not of any import. If you’re actually interested, I have determined that not only are you lonely, you’re incredibly bored as well, and I’ve decided that it is my job to fix that immediately.”

Jack just stares at him.

“I don’t really think that’s possible to do in such a short time,” he answers, setting the game controller aside. “Making friends takes a lot more effort than just sitting on a couch together for a few hours. Sorry, dude.”

“If you do not want to be friends, we can always be fuck-buddies. Casual sex between friends is always an invigorating experience, or so my information databases tell me.”

Jack is so, so glad he’s sitting down and not holding anything valuable anymore, or otherwise he’d be replacing yet another broken Xbox controller.

“Where the hell did you learn that word?” he sputters, leaning away just slightly. “And I hate to break it to you, but your ‘information databases’ are wrong. Casual sex between close friends is awkward as all hell, unless you’re both harboring secret feelings for each other and your communication skills are off the charts.”

He completely leaves out the part where he’s minorly offended at the idea of him being desperate enough for company to have sex with a fucking robot. Of course, the fact that he owns a walking, talking, humanoid computer at all is proof enough that something is very much lacking in his life, even if it’s not sex-related.

Mark’s resolve doesn’t seem to be shaken.

“I see no reason why I can’t at least entertain you with sexual favors,” he demands, and slides off the armrest onto the cushion beside Jack in a fluidly humanlike motion. “I believe the stress relief brought on by frequent sexual activity might do you a lot of good.”

“Are you broken or something?” Jack inquires sternly, swallowing hard at the look in Mark’s eyes. “The manual said you had sex-related functions, not a built in sex _addiction_.”

“I am not addicted to anything.” Mark is apparently a fountain of useless information that seems to directly contradict reality. “I am simply hyper aware of my surroundings and the needs of my administrator. You are alone and sexually frustrated and there is no one around but me—someone fully capable of simultaneously fulfilling numerous roles in your life. I do not understand your hesitance.”

He pauses, and leans forward ever so slightly.

“Also, you are very, _very_ pretty.”

Well, fuck.

Jack’s hands feel a little clammy, and Mark is—well, he’s attractive, for a robot. Google wasn’t kidding when they advertized their product as ‘overwhelmingly convincing and life-like’, because Mark’s voice dips down into a deeper register, and Jack can see the moment he quite literally switches gears into _seduction mode_.

Suddenly, there’s a hand on his knee and it’s warm somehow, though Jack isn’t sure if it’s purely simulation related or if Mark’s software is kicking into high gear. He’s a little too distracted to care.

“I could do so many, many things to you, if you wanted.” Mark’s fingers tighten on his leg and Jack shudders. It’s been a long time, a really, really ridiculously long time since anyone’s spoken to him like that, and the novelty of it alone is tempting.

Mark’s eyes are dark slits of desire and Jack wonders where this sudden focus on sexuality came from. He could have picked any one thing to home in on upon arriving at Jack’s place, but he chose to obsess over the fact that Jack hasn’t gotten laid in practically forever.

“I…” Jack has no idea what to say. He has his pride, as well as the fact that he’s survived this long with only his right hand and a few well-loved fantasies to string him along, but Mark is right here and he’s willing and beautiful and absolutely, one hundred percent not a human being.

“I can’t,” he says, backing away off of the couch and towards the television. “Mark, I can’t. That—that’s not what I ordered you for. I don’t need that sort of thing from you, not really. I’m sorry.”

Once again, he wonders why he’s bothering to apologize to a machine with an apparently overactive sex drive, and Mark just looks incredibly frustrated. It’s the most emotive Jack’s seen him since he arrived.

“I want to spend time with you.” Mark’s voice is hard, and the hand that was on Jack’s knee clenches into a fist. “You’re my master. I’m supposed to make you happy.”

And that—that right there is why Jack can’t do it. Mark is hardwired to want to please him, but he’s not capable of actually wanting things for himself, or at least Jack doesn’t think he is. He wants to sleep with Jack because he thinks he’s supposed to, because it’s his _job_ to keep him entertained.

It’s too close to being pitied for Jack’s liking, and he’s no one’s pity project.

“We don’t have to have sex for you to spend time with me,” he offers, because the last thing he needs is a robot that’s installing a bad attitude into his own hard drive. “There are other things you can do to make me happy, you know.”

“Sexual activity and physical affection are the number one listed solutions to my analysis of your current stasis.” Mark seems to be struggling with his programming. “Other options may be effective, but only for certain periods of time. All of my systems suggest that you are in need of a companion and a lover. I do not understand.”

Jack sighs. On one hand, he can’t fault Mark for wanting what’s best for him, seeing as how he can’t exactly go against his wiring, but on the other, it’s going to be difficult to explain human complexities to him.

“Humans need more than just sex and romance to be happy.” He tries to elaborate as plainly as possible. “Some don’t need them at all. It’s not that I’m not…lonely.” That last part is hard for him to admit, even though it’s glaringly obvious. “But I can wait for someone else to come along. A real person who’ll stick around because they love me, you know? There’s so much more you can do to make me happy than sucking my dick, honestly.”

Mark frowns even more deeply, and Jack wonders if anything he just said made sense at all to his robot’s linear brain.

“But…if I can’t make you happy all by myself, then I’ve failed at my job.” Mark looks impossibly befuddled, and it’s almost sad to see. “I’m a multifunctional humanoid computer system, and I’m equipped to be whatever you need. If I’m operating at full functionality, you should not need anyone else.”

Jack runs both hands through his hair and glances up at the ceiling, abruptly overwhelmed. Apparently his robot is not only sex addicted, he’s also codependent as all hell.

Google really wasn’t kidding about these models being buggy.

“I think we should save this discussion for another time.” He opts out of the direction this trainwreck is going with a weary sigh. “I’m too tired to argue my point with you and your programming clearly isn’t advanced enough to pick up on human complexities.”

Mark stiffens, like Jack’s just said something incredibly offensive, and his eyes shut down a little.

“If you no longer want to be around me, I will power myself down,” he declares, voice graying back to his usual monotone. “It’s clear that you have no use for me at the moment, and I wouldn’t want to be a nuisance.”

Jack isn’t too tired to get what Mark’s doing, and if he weren’t kind of insulted he’d be fully dumbfounded at his robot’s standoffish demeanor shift.

“Are you trying to guilt trip me into feeling bad about telling you off?” Jack looks at him skeptically, but Mark’s expression doesn’t change at all. He sits there, looking immaculate and stiff on Jack’s couch, and the sight of him makes Jack’s toes curl again.

“I have no such capabilities of understanding your inner thoughts and feelings,” Mark says, deadpan. Jack’s jaw drops a little.

“You little asshole,” he begins, pointing a finger at Mark’s face, and then he thinks better of it. Mark is staring at him head on, and his gaze burns like a pair of too bright headlights blaring in Jack’s eyes, steady and accusing.

Jack drops his finger. Mark’s gaze doesn’t waver.

“You know what, I don’t care anymore.” He slumps warily. “I’m not having this argument with a damn robot. I’m going to bed. Do whatever you want.”

He turns to go, because he doesn’t need Mark’s permission to leave the room, but he can feel those spotlight intense eyes on his back the whole way to the hallway.

“Shall I stay out here or join you in your room?” Mark asks, like Jack hadn’t just essentially told him to fuck off for the rest of the night. He wonders if Mark understands the concept of sweet revenge enough to inflict it upon Jack so immediately following their scuffle.

“It’s your choice,” Jack repeats, because he really doesn’t give a fuck and he’s interested to see what Mark does when presented with a set of options and his own free will.

There’s a beat of silence, like Mark’s processing the situation, and then Jack hears the sound of the couch springs creaking as Mark stands up.

A moment later, he’s inches away from where Jack’s waiting in the threshold; a soft, nearly inaudible humming emanating from his machinery.

“I don’t like being alone.” Mark repeats his words from earlier in the day, as if Jack could forget the first thing Mark had ever admitted to caring about, and Jack nods.

“Suit yourself,” he shrugs without looking back, and walks away.

Mark waits patiently on Jack’s bed while he brushes his teeth and changes into a clean t-shirt, shuffling around the room throughout his pre-bedtime routine.

When Jack finally falls into bed fifteen minutes later, feeling muzzy and grateful for the softness of his sheets, Mark slides down until his head is resting on Jack’s extra pillows. He looks like a real human like this, smooth dark hair draped against the pillowcase and soft almond eyes focused on Jack beneath the covers.

Jack looks away.

“Will it make you happy if I hold you?” Mark’s brief but acid demeanor from minutes ago is gone, replaced by something much more innocent and gentle-eyed. Jack has no idea what to make of it.

“Do you even sleep?” he wonders aloud, bypassing the question altogether. “Or are you just going to lie there all night?”

Mark peers up at him over the white valleys of the bed and blankets, and Jack feels incredibly vulnerable again beneath his gaze.

“If you like, you can program me to fall asleep whenever you wish. If you’d like me to be awake as long as you are, I will only shut down once I am sure you have fully reached unconsciousness and will not be woken again until morning.” Mark’s voice is honest and quiet, and Jack hates the way it sounds—soothing and warm to his tired ears.

 _It’s just a robot,_ he thinks. _He’s not a real person. He doesn’t really care._

“That’s fine,” he says, rolling over and turning off the light so he doesn’t have to look Mark in the eyes anymore. “You can wait until I’m asleep, if you want.”

“That’s not a real command.” Mark sounds unsure of himself, but Jack can already feel his own head shutting down. “But I will do as you say.”

Jack’s mind darkens slowly, in time with the hum of Mark’s inner hardware working to maintain his state of consciousness, alert and watchful.

A warm, hand-shaped weight rests on his hip, heavy and possessive, but Jack’s thoughts slip away from him before he can ask Mark whether or not he’s programmed to guard Jack even while asleep.


	2. and then we throw in the sex and now everybody's excited

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack is weaker than he'd thought, and Mark has his own agenda.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Remember how I said this was going to be a bad porno? 
> 
> Fair warning, it's a bad porno. Like, really bad.
> 
> You may have noticed that I updated the tags a bit, so heed the warnings, although most of what you see will be coming into play more in the next chapter. I'm thinking this fic may end up being four or five chapters total, which is longer than I'd originally intended, but what are you gonna do?
> 
> Hope the 9.1k of overdramatic cheese doesn't kill you.
> 
> Title is from Love, Sex, Riot by ISSUES.

“So,” Jack swallows around a mouthful of chocolatey goodness and looks over at Mark, past where he’s propped his feet up on another of his rickety kitchen chairs. “I was reading through the User’s Manual again and I noticed it said something about ‘emotional simulation software’. You wanna maybe tell me more about that?”

Mark, perfectly put together and slightly underwhelmed as ever, glances up from where he’s running an antivirus scan on Jack’s laptop.

“I am equipped with prototypical new software, recently pioneered by Google Incorporated, that allows artificial intelligence units such as myself to experience something similar to human emotions, given the proper stimuli are present.” Mark rattles off the information like he’s predicting light rain showers for Thursday, and Jack chews a little more slowly.

“So…basically Google wanted you to act as humanlike as possible, and they outfitted you with the ability to emote realistically?” He’s gotten pretty good at understanding the mumbo jumbo that Mark can unload on him without a second thought, but it’s always better to be safe than sorry when it comes to learning anything from his new robot.

“Precisely.” Mark frowns a little at Jack’s computer, then immediately transitions back into bland, bored tolerance. “I am capable of feeling both positive and negative emotions, but not without good reason or circumstance.”

Jack takes that to mean that Mark isn’t going to randomly wake up one day and have a mood swing that would put a pregnant woman to shame. It’s pretty relieving to hear, because Mark’s creepy and invasive enough as it is without the added potential for internal meltdowns at 2 AM.

“What about pain and pleasure?” Jack can’t help himself from prying even further. Mark’s _his_ property, technically speaking, even though he does boast something resembling a mind of his own. Jack really has to get over feeling awkward or guilty about asking stuff that might otherwise be considered too forward. “Did they equip you with nerve endings and pleasure receptors in that artificial brain of yours?”

Mark looks up again, and Jack genuinely cannot tell if he’s thinking about biting Jack on the leg or not, rather unkindly so. The expression on his face is mildly disconcerted and a tad more suspicious than what Jack would like to envision him wearing. He can almost see the hypothetical gears turning inside his android’s head.

“Are you planning on testing them out on me?”

Jack probably should have seen that one coming, seeing as most of Mark’s personality currently seems to be stored in the ‘sass’ compartment of his hard drive.

“I’m not gonna try and like, chop off your fingers just to see if they grow back or anything,” he says indignantly. “What kind of sadist do you think I am?”

Mark doesn’t bat an eyelash.

“I only assumed that since you enjoy causing yourself grief by denying your body the stress relief it so clearly deserves, you’d have no problem inflicting the same sort of torture upon me.”

Jack glares at him, his chocolate bar melting pathetically all over his fingers.

“Is there an off button somewhere that completely eliminates your ‘little bitch’ programming? Because if there is, do me a favor and turn it off immediately.”

He doesn’t even try to pretend he’s not annoyed, although it’s become a pretty consistent emotion for him in the past week, so the feeling is less like an intense needling and more like someone poking him repeatedly in the side.

“I have no such button or function,” Mark replies, as though he has no idea what Jack’s talking about. Jack knows for absolute certain that he does. “You, however, seem to carry enough of the trait for the both of us.”

Jack chews his candy even more furiously, despite how ridiculous he knows he probably looks.

“I want a goddamn refund,” he demands, jabbing an accusatory finger in Mark’s direction. Mark doesn’t even look up. “You are a broken, broken machine. I thought you were supposed to succumb to my every whim, stoop to my every desire. All you’re doing now is giving me a load of shit.”

He’s not actually angry, seeing as how this isn’t the first time this week Mark has sassed him back without so much as a blip in his programming, so Jack figures it must be an innate thing.

“I’m supposed to follow your orders and do my best to keep your physical, mental, and emotional health in superior shape.” Mark has been particularly ice cold today, and it’s kind of bumming Jack out. “Except it appears that the orders you prefer to give me are commonly in direct contradiction to what’s best for your well-being, so I am at a loss.”

Jack rolls his eyes and licks his fingertips, wondering if robots can get turned on by suggestive actions, or if Mark can get turned on at all. He’s not actually sure he wants to know, but he does feel the growing need to actually do something fun for once.

“You just don’t understand humans.” Jack stands up from his chair and goes to rinse his sticky hands in the sink. “I don’t really feel like explaining it anymore.”

“What do you feel like doing then, Sean?” Mark only sounds vaguely interested, and Jack imagines that it’s all for show. “As I’ve said before, there are numerous things I know how to do solely for your entertainment.”

Jack scowls and flicks droplets of water from his hands, turning back away from the sink.

“No thanks, I’m good,” he assures his new companion and leans against the countertop. “I was kind of thinking something more out of the box, you know?”

“Please elaborate.” It’s scary how robotic Mark sounds sometimes, even with his built in sass levels and desire to—apparently—fuck Jack’s brains out until he can no longer walk.

“Uh.” Jack shrugs a little, wondering why he feels so uncomfortable asking. “Well, I thought about making another video with you in it, except this time with you as the main feature. The viewers have been commenting and asking to see more of what you can do, and I thought it’d be cool if I did an entire video on it.”

“I have no problem with appeasing the wishes of your many internet enthusiasts,” Mark replies in a tone of voice that suggests the exact opposite. He still seems reluctant to talk about or engage in interactions with people other than Jack. It’s always possible that Mark’s just narrow minded and fixated like that, given how insistent he is about getting Jack into bed, but his aversion to other humans is weird to say the least.

“Okay cool?” Jack rubs the back of his neck with one hand and bites his lip. “I mean, I’ve still got time to film another video today, so whenever you’re done scanning my computer we can try a few things out.”

Mark finally breaks away from Jack’s laptop to stare at him head on, and it’s so deliberately mechanical that Jack suddenly feels more vulnerable than he’s ever felt in his own home. His robot’s eyes don’t even flicker.

“Whatever makes you happy, Sean.”

-.-

Filming takes way too long for having two sets of hands working to get the job done, and by the time the footage is complete, Jack is ten kinds of strung out.

He leaves Mark to edit the footage so that he can look it over later (Jack prefers to have the final say on vlog-type videos, seeing as they have a different vibe to them) and retreats to his bedroom, content to steal a few minutes to himself.

He hasn’t been alone since he’d first switched Mark on, and it’s the strangest thing: having no other familiar humans around, yet having absolutely no privacy at all. Mark seems almost offended by Jack’s desire to be by himself, with the way he’s always trailing behind, popping up wherever Jack goes and sticking his nose and his hands where they don’t belong.

Still, Jack can’t bring himself to shut Mark off again. The silence would be too loud.

He shuts the bedroom door behind him and flops onto his bed, eyes fixating on the ceiling like he’s expecting words of wisdom to hastily scrawl themselves into the off white paint.

Jack’s hot and bothered, unable to deny it after going without any outside touch for so long and being in such close, tense proximity to Mark for a solid hour. He wonders if the viewers will be able to pinpoint the moment he started getting flustered thanks to Mark’s wandering eyes and hands, or if he’d managed to preserve some shred of dignity throughout the duration of filming.

 _You’re not attracted to a goddamn robot_ , he thinks viciously, and he’s not. He can’t be.

He’s been so long with only his hand and a few select ‘online purchases’ to assist him that anything vaguely human shaped is bound to get his blood pumping in his veins.

Mark is pretty and much too realistic at times for Jack’s libido to resist, all robotic creepiness and indomitable sass levels aside. It’s a mental thing, not an actual sign of attraction.

It’s not as satisfying a conclusion as he’d like it to be, and an image of Mark’s dark, heavy lidded eyes flashes across his mind. Jack shifts on the bed, his skin prickling in that way it always does when he’s starting to get aroused.

Normally he doesn’t fight it, seeing as there’s nothing like a little stress relief in the afternoon, and it’s not like there’s anyone else around to judge him anyways, but this time things are different.

This time, there’s a robot with scientifically enhanced hearing abilities and a sex drive that could power the entire online porn industry, sitting just a few rooms away. Jack knows he’s risking a lot thinking about jerking off with Mark so close by, but the idea of having to go back out there so obviously half-hard and red in the face sounds like a literal nightmare.

The fact that Mark’s face and voice keep making unwarranted cameos in his thoughts aren’t helping the heaps of shame currently piling themselves onto his shoulders.

He skims his fingers across the front of his sweatpants—he’s not leaving the house today so jeans are more than unnecessary—and tries to put thoughts of Mark’s low, almost-human voice out of his head.

Jack’s already stiffening beneath his own touch, and he runs one finger along the line of his hardening cock, itching to take it slow but worried about how long it’ll be before Mark comes knocking.

He has a ridiculously keen ability to sense Jack’s wants and emotions at the most inopportune of times, and if he’s got a radar for Jack being really fucking turned on, then he’s going to come running like a dog chasing its master.

Jack tugs his sweatpants and boxers down just a bit, tucking them beneath his balls and going back to stroking himself lightly. The cool air feels good on his bare skin, and there’s a stirring in his gut that seems directly tied to the possibility of being walked in on at any time.

 _Fuck_ , he thinks to himself. _That’s not a kink I needed to know I have._

Jack hasn’t been the most explorative guy over the years since he’d first had sex, so learning new things about his sexual preferences is a bit of a new territory for him. Finding out that he might be turned on by the idea of his incredibly attractive, handsy robot companion catching him like this?

He’s not really prepared to analyze that one, and he’d rather Mark not ever get the chance either.

Jack drags his index finger underneath the head of his dick and sighs, sinking back into the pillows and trying his best to clear his thoughts once more. He wraps his hand loosely around himself, stroking himself to full hardness, because there’s a part of him that still wants to take it slow, but that part is being drowned out by the part that really, really wants to come.

He moans softly, tilting his head to the side and focusing on the thought of other hands on him, slightly bigger and rougher, pinning him down into the mattress and forcing him to take it slow. He quickens his pace, but only slightly, and bites his lip as Mark’s voice echoes off the edges of his brain.

_‘I could do so many, many things to you, if you wanted.’_

Jack whines at the very idea of those hands being Mark’s, and then he shoves the thought away again, sliding his thumb over his already leaking slit and squeezing harder.

Taking it slow is apparently not going to be an option, given the way his brain and his body are betraying him with the desire to get off so quickly, supplying him with a week’s worth of images of Mark watching him from across the room. Jack’s hips buck upwards, his cock sliding up into the circle of his fingers as he’s bombarded with the sound of Mark whispering in his ears in the early hours of the morning, lying in this very bed, offering things that Jack has no business wanting.

_‘It would be so easy, Sean, if you would let me touch you. You wouldn’t have to do any of the work—all you would have to do is lie there and let me take care of you.’_

Jack can’t stop the way his knees bend and skin breaks out in shudders, feet resting flat on the mattress as his pace quickens, cock leaking profusely all over his fingers and hand. He knows where his body is going with this, what it wants, and he’s more turned on now and terrified by the idea of it than ever.

Jack’s had sex with exactly one guy, and it was good, great even, but the most adventurous thing he’s done since then is learn how to finger himself properly.

There’s lube somewhere nearby, because it’s his bedroom and he has a bottle or two stashed in his dresser and nightstand, but for some reason the idea of stopping any of his movements feels like the worst kind of torture.

Almost without his permission, Jack’s sucking on his fingers, coating them with saliva and spreading his legs even farther, his sweatpants falling down his thighs and bunching around his ankles. He kicks them off, because thin walls be damned, he’s stressed and frustrated as all hell and if he’s going to take the time to do this then it’s going to be good, dammit.

His fingers are sticky and dripping, and Jack reaches down between his legs, right hand still working his cock at a steady pace, flushed red and dark and hard against the pale skin of his hand and wrist.

The first brush of his index finger over his entrance has him jumping and his thighs shaking, skin oversensitive against the softness of his comforter. His fingertips feel smooth and stiff between his legs, and he presses forward experimentally, cursing himself for how long it’s been since he even attempted this.

_‘All you have to do is tell me how you like it. I can make you feel so good—I’ll do whatever you like. Do you want me to put my fingers in you, Sean?’_

Mark’s phantom voice is back, repeating the strangely dirty, sticky offers he’d proposed to Jack just last night, hand on his hip and face pressed into Jack’s collarbone. He doesn’t like personal space in bed anymore than out of it, and he’d quickly taken it upon himself to tangle their limbs together and slide his way in between Jack’s legs like he’d belonged there.

Jack had let him, because saying no to comforting pseudo-human contact hadn’t been something he’d been able to deny after the first few nights of trying desperately to maintain his dignity. Mark just couldn’t seem to manage sleeping on his own side of the bed, and Jack had found himself waking up smashed into his oddly warm side anyways, so trying to keep his distance at night had immediately been proved pointless.

_‘You’re so beautiful Sean, so sweet. I bet you’d be so slick and warm around my fingers, can I try? Just once? I’ll make sure you love it.’_

The stretch around his index finger burns just a little with no lube and only spit to guide the way, but Jack doesn’t care, too lost in the jumble of words in his head and the quick strokes of his hand on his cock, driving him mad with every drag of his thumb against the dusty pink head.

He needs to get off, needs to do something about this pent up frustration that’s building in his veins and affecting his mood. Jack slides the first finger as deep as it can go and he writhes, unsure of whether to keep bucking up into his hand or back onto his fingers.

His thoughts swim back to Mark against his will, and he thinks about how in a few hours, they’ll be back together on this bed and Mark will be practically lying on top of him, begging to do to Jack what he’s doing to himself now.

He thinks about what would happen if he said yes—just once, just to try it—and the way Mark wouldn’t waste a second. He’d take his time if Jack asked him to, fucking him open slow and deep on his fingers, kissing up the skin of his thighs and staring down at him with that gaze that makes Jack feel like Mark can see inside of him.

Jack slides a second finger inside of himself and shudders through the expanded stretch and burn, wondering if Mark’s fingers would move differently inside him. Would they be longer, thicker? If he asked, Mark would fuck him just right with them, curling and scissoring and searching out that one place inside of him that he’s only managed to find a few times since first doing this.

“ _Mark_.” Jack can’t stop the name from spilling out over his tongue. He doesn’t want to admit to anything, not the way he’s getting off to the idea of Mark finger fucking him senseless or even the idea of being touched by something that’s not human, but here he is. “Mark…goddammit Mark, just fuck me. Oh god, _please_.”

“Is that a command?”

Jack yelps and slams his legs shut, scrambling backwards on the bed.

Mark is standing in the doorway, staring at Jack getting himself off like he’d ordered tickets to a VIP showing, and he looks fucking entranced.

“Wh-what the fuck are you doing here?” Jack’s still got one hand wrapped around his cock, leaking into his fist and Mark is watching as though he expects him to keep going. “Aren’t you supposed to be editing my video?”

Mark’s gaze doesn’t waver.

“I heard you making noises from down the hall, and I thought it best to investigate, for your safety.” Mark steps a little closer to the bed, and Jack realizes that he could have been standing there for any length of time, only drawn out of hiding when Jack started calling his name.

“I’m fine,” Jack says shortly. “How long were you standing there watching me?”

Mark meets his eyes with a sharp jerk of his head, eyes bright and bordering on wild. “Long enough to know that you were not being honest when you denied me all those times, Sean. Your rambling indicates that you were thinking about me while touching yourself, which is directly contradictory to your claims that you are not, in fact, sexually frustrated.”

Jack feels more precome ooze out over his fingers at the sound of Mark saying his name, and the sensation spurs him into action.

“Get out,” he orders. “Mark, get out and leave me alone. I don’t want you here right now, go away.”

Mark frowns and his spine stiffens as though he’s momentarily trying to resist a direct command.

“I will return if you ever change your mind,” he says, and then he’s turning away, leaving a gaping hole in the pit of Jack’s stomach. “You shouldn’t deny yourself like this, Sean. The consequences will be only yours.”

When he’s gone, Jack slumps back into the pillows and shudders.

 _You could have asked him to help you, and then sent him away,_ the voice in his head whispers, and Jack swats at it meanly.

His abdomen is a mess of precome and a soft sheen of sweat, and his head feels thick with cotton, unable to process the fact that Mark had stood there and watched him finger himself to the thought of Mark’s hands and voice.

He’s never going to be able to live this down, and briefly he considers checking the manual to see if it’s possible to delete some of Mark’s memory banks and erase the idea that this ever happened. Somehow he sincerely doubts it.

It only takes him five minutes to finish himself off after that, because some sick, traitorous part of his head latches itself onto the sight of Mark staring Jack down as he fucks himself on his fingers and begs needily for someone else.

Jack takes a nap and ignores the reality of Mark probably puttering around in his house somewhere, only a few rooms away from Jack and his shame.

-.-

“Would you like me to go to the store for you, since you can’t seem to manage pulling yourself up off the couch?”

A few days later, Jack’s playing video games again—because it’s not like he ever does anything else—and he doesn’t remember ever hoping that having a robot companion would also mean being judged for having absolutely no life whatsoever.

“You wanna run that by me again, but with less of an attitude this time?” He feels like a mother or a scorned lover, having to reprimand Mark for being a complete asshole and stepping out of line with his commentary about what Jack chooses to do with his free time.

His game freezes abruptly on the screen and Jack grits his teeth, pressing buttons and flicking the left and right joysticks, but to no avail. A shadow blocks the colorful haze of frozen pictures and Mark’s there, standing in front of the television with his arms crossed and a growl in his throat.

Jack sits up, startled.

“Did you just freeze my fucking game?” he asks, voice going hollow and high with indignance. He’s pretty sure he never gave Mark root access to any of his consoles specifically.

“I asked you a question and you did not respond appropriately.” Mark’s unfairly intimidating like this, veins twining their way up his smooth arms and eyes flashing against the low light of Jack’s living room. “I cannot do my job if you do not give me valid commands. Now answer me, do you want me to go to the store for you or not?”

Jack swallows hard and narrows his eyes.

“Maybe if it’ll get you out of the house and my business, then yes, I’d really appreciate it if you went to the store for me, Mark.”

Mark nods stiffly, but he doesn’t move from where he’s obstructing the screen or bother to unfreeze Jack’s playthough.

“If you want me to perform actions autonomously outside of your restricted domain, then I must be given administrative abilities.” There’s that request again, the one Mark’s managed to slip into conversation at least once a day since his first activation.

Mark is a fucking menace all by himself, even while cooped up in this apartment and under Jack’s command. No goddamn way is Jack giving him free reign and letting him out unattended with more power than he knows how to handle.

“Not a chance,” Jack sneers, standing up from the couch and tossing the useless controller onto the cushions. “I don’t trust you any further than I could throw you.”

Mark moves forward, gliding closer to Jack until they’re almost nose to nose, and Jack realizes with a sick sort of satisfaction that Mark is slightly taller than him.

“You won’t give me admin permissions,” Mark breathes, and his breath actually feels warm on Jack’s face—something he still can’t get over. “You won’t let me go outside, you’ll hardly let me touch you and you won’t let me give you what my expert analysis has deemed that you desperately _need_. What exactly then, am I supposed to do with you?”

Jack blinks.

“What am I supposed to do with _you_?” he counters incredulously, unable to back away from Mark the way he is now, trapped between his robot’s torso and the frame of the couch. “You’re supposed to help me out, not follow me around, judge me silently, and make my life a million times harder. Whoever programmed you had more than a few screws loose if they thought that whatever they were creating was going to be of any benefit to anyone.”

Mark’s face slackens into something contemplative and disgruntled.

“Are my readings correct in telling me that you are unhappy with me, then?” he asks, arms dropping to his sides. “I cannot change the way I am programmed any more than you can rewrite your human DNA. I do not know what to do to satisfy you, since you do not seem to want to be satisfied.”

Jack’s not sure if he believes that Mark can really feel sadness or defeat, but it’s barely been a week and a half since he’s been active and it’s clear that Jack’s already driven his own robot to the brink of his limits. A pang of guilt stabs him in the chest and he runs both hands through his hair, turning away from Mark’s gaze.

“I’m unhappy that I can’t seem to take care of you properly,” he admits finally, feeling ashamed and exhausted. “I thought that having you around would make me feel less lonely and give me some other purpose to my life, but it’s not looking like that’s the case.”

Mark makes a confused noise and Jack’s eyes dart back to him, backed by the half light like a rigid tree sporting a web of drooping branches.

“It is not your job to take care of me,” he intones, tilting his chin upwards. Jack feels like a small child, faced with a mountain he’s tried and simultaneously failed to climb in such a short time. “It is only your job to tell me what you want and to let me take care of you.”

“I, uh—”

 _‘—don’t think you understand how partnerships work’_ Jack’s about to say, before his mouth clicks shut audibly. The relationship he has with Mark isn’t a real relationship at all. Mark’s just a robot, and he’s programmed to meet Jack’s every need. Treating him any differently is just going to strain his circuits even more than they already are.

“I’d really like some peace and quiet right about now,” he murmurs, entire body loosening with a sigh. “And maybe a shower as well—I feel like I haven’t changed clothes in days.”

Mark considers him with an expression that’s so close to wary it makes Jack’s stomach churn.

“And me? What can I do for you in the meantime?”

Jack ducks his head. “You can wait here for me, if you’d like. I’m not going to bed any time soon.”

Mark nods shortly, and his voice is flat. “Affirmative, Sean. I will wait here.”

“Okay.” Everything is suddenly awkward, and Jack’s itching to get out the room and away from Mark’s assessing stare. He feels like he’s being stripped down and shoved under a microscope, but that edge that’s always there in Mark’s eyes hasn’t dissolved yet, and it’s doing things to his insides.

“We’ll talk later about granting you admin permissions.” Jack throws him a bone just to ease the tension in the room, and scurries away to the safety of the bathroom. He’s not all that certain that he’ll ever give Mark his desired admin permissions, but he figures the gesture of consideration is enough to clear the air.

-.-

Jack takes his sweet time in the shower, relishing in the hot stream of water and the steam that blocks out his anxieties, even if only momentarily. He’s not really tired despite the quick ticking of the clock, wearing away at the late hours of the night.

He wants to sit down and distract himself, to set his mental exhaustion aside and bury himself in something else. A squeeze in his chest, blunt and heavy, reminds him that what he needs is good company and friends, strong words, something human to keep his mind off of the aching loneliness that’s burrowing deeper beneath his skin.

The heat of the water and the suds trickling down his skin fill his gut with warmth, and when he steps out of the shower and wraps a towel around his waist, the itch for human contact has increased to a nagging burn.

He crosses the tile floor and shivers through the cold, wet footprints he sloshes across the stone, drying his hair off in the mirror and blinking down at the reorganized countertop before him,

All of his toiletries and washcloths have been perfectly organized and folded, arranged in an aesthetically pleasing manner, and there’s a set of clothes folded neatly next to the sink that certainly weren’t there when he’d first come to shower a half hour ago.

“ _Mark_ ,” he groans aloud, something like weary resignation settling in his chest. It’s clear that at some point, Mark had left his post by the couch and come to bring Jack his night clothes and toothbrush, set out conveniently a few inches away from a brand new tube of toothpaste Jack didn’t even know he had.

“I took the liberty of picking out your clothes for you so you wouldn’t be burdened by having to do it yourself.” True to form, Mark materializes from the darkness of Jack’s bedroom like he’s capable of traveling via shadows, slipping in and out of the corners of the house like a silent mist.

Jack grips the edge of the countertop and meets Mark’s eyes in the mirror, but his robot doesn’t stop by the bed, instead moving closer to Jack’s half naked form with intent and desire clouding his irises.

“I thought it might make you more comfortable to have everything set out for you.” Mark comes to a halt just behind him, and his hands slide to rest on Jack’s shoulders, attentive and firm. “It would not be healthy for you to go to bed in low spirits.”

Mark is so, _so_ goddamn gorgeous in the crisp, warm light of Jack’s bathroom, and his skin seems to glow next to Jack’s.

“I was already feeling better but…thank you.” Jack swallows around the words, abnormally thick and weighty in his throat. “I really appreciate it.”

“Shall I keep picking out your clothes for you in the near future?” Mark latches onto Jack’s praise like a dog with a bone and runs with it. “It seems to make you happy when I do little things like this.”

Jack tilts his head to look at Mark, breaking the line of their shared gaze in the mirror, and Mark’s arms slip lower to wrap around Jack’s waist.

“I think I can pick my own clothes out.” The words come out quieter than he’d expected, and his hands trace Mark’s on his abdomen, feeling the way they’re warm and lifelike even after days upon days of activity. “But you’re always welcome to help, I guess.”

“If it makes you happy, I will do it.” Mark rests his chin on Jack’s shoulder and closes his eyes. It’s the most scarily human thing Jack’s ever seen him do, a stunning contrast to his flat words and uncanny ability to appear out of nowhere.

 “Do you want me to relax you?” There are fingers tracing the edge of Jack’s towel, and Jack flicks at them with his own, playfully teasing them away. “I won’t trespass too much, I promise. It is within my limits to be gentle.”

“Define ‘relax’.” Jack stutters over the instruction, but he knows he’s walking a dangerous road just by indulging Mark’s offer. Nighttime seems to bring out some sort of hidden bravery built into Mark’s personality, something that’s only activated by dark skies and the late hour of his internal clock. He gets more daring, more insistent, and his tongue is looser in his mouth.

“Ideally, you would let me bend you over this countertop and have my way with you,” Mark hums into the crook of Jack’s neck, and Jack’s knees go terribly weak. “But since you’re so hesitant, I’ll go slow this time. I’ll make you feel good, using only my fingers and my mouth.”

Mark’s hands are tugging at the knot on Jack’s towel, and Jack’s mind is giving way faster than the fabric, because he hasn’t shoved Mark away yet and his robot’s fingers are already wandering.

“You really should let me take care of you, Sean.” Mark’s voice is impossibly deep and almost tangible in the air surrounding them. “You can’t imagine the things I could for you, _to_ you. I know how you sound when you’re feeling needy and how you’d sound with my fingers inside of you, spreading you open. Why won’t you accept that I know what’s best for you?”

The towel drops to the floor and Jack doesn’t know what to do with his hands, so he grips the countertop tighter and feels the cool marble dig into his blunt fingertips. Mark’s hands smooth up and down the muscle of his abdomen, tracing, teasing, never quite touching Jack between his legs.

Jack can feel Mark pressed up against him from behind, and he’s long since stopped expecting Mark to wear anything but track pants and t-shirt around the house, so the lack of heavy fabric isn’t a surprise to him. The sensation of something warm and stiff against the swell of his ass is there, rubbing up against him and Jack realizes abruptly that Mark is _hard_.

“Oh _fuck_ ,” he chokes on his own breath and Mark squeezes his hip, not asking, just owning.

“Did you want something more?” he breathes, lips pressing against Jack’s neck and Jack shudders intensely. He fixates on the image of the both of them in the mirror, crystal clear and utterly lewd in the near pornographic lighting of his bathroom.

Mark’s fingers are inches away from Jack’s cock, already half hard between his legs and he’s pressing Jack up against the counter’s edge like there’s some sort of instinct inside of him. He looks like he wants to do as he’d promised earlier, to bend Jack over and fuck him ‘til he can’t walk, and the idea is way, way hotter than it should be.

Jack cannot fucking believe he’s letting a robot— _his_ robot—treat him like this: with heavy petting and dark words in his ears, telling him these things like they’re real and plausible. The reality that he’s minutes away from being pinned down and fucked by something that’s not even human washes over him like a bucket of cold water and Jack’s breath hitches.

He shoves Mark’s hands away and backs towards the carpet of his bedroom, feet leaving the tile and heart hammering so loudly in his chest he’s positive that Mark’s sharp ears can hear it.

“N-no more,” he insists, scrambling for his clothes and remembering them piled on the counter a few feet from Mark. “No more, Mark. I’m not doing this. We have to stop.”

Mark’s chest heaves once, and he looks as human and wrecked as Jack’s ever seen him, which admittedly isn’t all that much. He’s visibly hard—Jack’s still trying to get over the fact that his robot actually has a functioning dick—and there’s a red tint to his cheeks that has to be a simulation, seeing as how Mark has no blood in his body to rush either to his face or his groin.

“You are truly an enigma.” If he were human, Jack imagines that Mark would sound out of breath and inexplicably frustrated, but instead he just appears befuddled. “There must be an error with my pre-programmed sex appeal if you have managed to deny me this much.”

Jack shakes his head.

“Trust me,” he says, darting past Mark to grab his clothes and slip them on in a hurry. “There’s absolutely nothing wrong with your sex appeal. It’s incredibly high functioning, if you’ll take my word for it.”

Mark doesn’t look convinced.

“I have reason to doubt that,” he says, glancing around for lack of anything better to do. The sight of him is way more inviting that it should be. “I am still not good enough for you, it seems.”

Jack snaps the string on his sweatpants and tucks his hands underneath his armpits. He doesn’t trust his own limbs not to carry him back to Mark and beg for more.

“Don’t be so hard on yourself.” He lets out a breath and tentatively allows himself to appreciate the curve of Mark’s biceps and the way he’s looking at Jack. “I’m the one with the issues, I think. Not you.”

Mark doesn’t appear to know what to make of that, so he bypasses it with impressive speed and moves closer to Jack.

“Have you decided to go to bed now, instead? If so, I will return to waiting out in the living room if you would prefer to be left alone.”

Every particle of Jack’s body recoils at the idea of Mark disappearing without a trace, and he shakes his head again, this time furiously.

“I’m going back out to the couch to play games until I pass out.” He tries to bridge the gap with something familiar to both of them. “You’re welcome to join, so long as you don’t get any ideas about sticking your hands down my pants.”

Mark’s face darkens slightly, but his arms cross in reluctant agreement.

“I cannot promise that I won’t be thinking about putting my hands all over you, but I will refrain from acting upon those thoughts if you wish.”

Jack glances up at the ceiling and prays to a god he doesn’t believe in for fortitude and strength of character.

“Great,” he mutters, and waves Mark on. “Let’s go then, lover boy. I’d love to see just how strong your self control is.”

-.-

When Jack wakes again, it’s 4 AM and the sky is still dark.

He’s immediately aware of Mark curled against him, arm thrown over Jack’s side and lips pressed to his scalp. There’s no sign of breathing, but Jack discovered days ago that Mark doesn’t actually need to breathe, and doesn’t even bother to simulate the action unless it’s for emphasis.

The next thing he’s aware of is that he’s hard again, and if he didn’t need to be quiet, he’d groan aloud. This is the most action his libido’s gotten in months, and his head is spinning a little at so constantly being in a ridiculously persistent state of arousal.

Jack shifts, very carefully so that Mark doesn’t spring to life and pelt him with questions as to why he can’t sleep, gasping slightly when his cock rubs against the mattress.

Ok, so he’s really turned on then. He can feel the damp spot on the front of his boxers, but he can’t remember what he’d been dreaming about, if anything.

Mark doesn’t move, but Jack can’t see his face and his arm remains tightly locked around Jack’s waist like a restraint. If he tries to do anything about his little problem, Mark is going to wake up and Jack is going to be screwed, probably literally.

He shimmies downward, hoping to slide out of Mark’s hold and maybe retreat into another room for just long enough to get himself off and maybe have a quick glass of water. Mark, as it turns out, is an expert at boxing people in using only his unconscious body, and Jack takes a moment to contemplate whether or not Mark had powered himself down with a plan to keep Jack in one place.

Jack twists, feeling his shirt ride up and his skin break out in goosebumps. Every tiny little motion is only fueling his arousal, especially crammed so close to Mark’s warm, hard body like this, and it’s infuriating.

Suddenly, mid-wriggle, Mark’s arm tightens drastically and his body shifts next to Jack’s.

“Sean,” he rumbles, and Jack’s entire body freezes like he’s been tranq’d. “Why are you leaving me?”

Jack has no idea what to do or say. “Um,” he hems and haws, shivering at the feather like strokes of Mark’s hand on his side. “I wasn’t going anywhere, I promise. I’m just a little…uncomfortable like this.”

Mark rolls and pushes Jack until he’s beneath Mark’s body, half blanketed by the warm, heavy weight of his companion, and Mark looks down at him. His eyes glow softly in the prickling shadows, stealing Jack’s breath with no shame at all.

Mark presses his thigh up against where Jack’s rock hard and leaking between his legs, and Jack can’t help it—he moans loudly.

“Why are you uncomfortable?” Mark asks him, but there’s a glint in those unnatural eyes that says he’s looking for a different answer than Jack’s prepared to give. “What’s wrong, Sean?”

Jack grimaces and his hips shake beneath the effort it takes not to roll them up into Mark’s leg.

“You know very well what’s wrong, asshole,” he hisses, gripping at Mark’s biceps. “I wouldn’t be like this if it weren’t for you.”

Mark hums softly, and he adjusts his weight on top of Jack, until he’s planted firmly in between Jack’s legs as though that’s where he’d intended to be all night.

“You should let me atone for my mistakes,” he murmurs, and there’s that voice again, the one that’s made of spine tingling whispers and hot kisses. “Just let me make it right Sean, just this once.”

Mark looms over him, dark and solid and emanating heat like he’s trying to warm the entire room, and Jack can feel himself getting stickier than ever beneath his sweatpants, sweat pooling between fabric and skin.

“What’re you gonna do to me?” he asks weakly, and he wants so badly to touch himself. His cock is throbbing, fully hard and probably still leaking, and Jack’s only got so much resistance stored away in his limbs.

There’s a soft nip at his neck and hands on his thighs, spreading them wider to accommodate Mark’s hips and Jack feels incredibly dizzy and exposed.

“Tell me what you want.” Mark’s words vibrate against the skin of his neck and his thumbs massage circles into Jack’s hips, his sweatpants slowly creeping downwards until Mark’s got a firm grip on the fabric. “Sean, you have to say it. You have to tell me what you want from me.”

 _Just this once_ , his mind tells him, and it’s a lying, conniving bastard. Jack’s not stupid. There’s no such thing as just once, not for him or for Mark, and if he lets Mark do this to him, there will be no turning back.

“P-please,” he whimpers, and his arms lock around Mark’s shoulders. “I want you to touch me, I want you to make me c-come. Fuck, Mark, please make me come!”

“Affirmative.” There’s a beat of silence and then Mark’s pulling Jack’s sweats off, exposing him to the warm air of the room and tossing them aside.

Sure enough, Jack’s hard and leaking steadily onto his abdomen, and he wonders how he’s even still able to become aroused after getting himself off so many times in the past few days. Mark must be poisoning him somehow, emitting pheromones or drugging his meals so Jack’s too horny to do anything but think about sex. He’d never been like this before Mark came around, anyhow.

Mark stares at Jack with his legs spread wide and Jack whines again, this time in impatience and embarrassment.

“Touch me,” he begs again, with more desperation in his voice than command. “Mark, _please_.”

“Do you want my fingers or my cock?” Mark wraps one hand around Jack’s aching length and strokes him slowly, fingers gathering the spurts of precome decorating his skin and smearing them into the shaft. “I can use either, or both, depending on what’ll make you scream the hardest.”

Jack bucks his hips up into Mark’s touch and bites his lip. He wants to get fucked. For the first time in forever, he really and truly wants to get fucked and Mark is offering it with no hesitation at all, hand steady on Jack’s cock and eyes expectant.

“Y-you can fuck me later,” he grates out, fingers circling one of his own nipples and tugging slightly. He pants wetly. “Just, just spread me open on your fingers and make me come. I wanna feel you, Mark, please.”

Mark’s back to looming over him in the span of a second and he’s still touching Jack, making him twitch and shudder as he leans down to whisper something into Jack’s skin.

“You like it when I talk you down, don’t you?” he asks, and Jack nods, a pathetic moan escaping his throat. “You like hearing me tell you how pretty you are and how tight you’ll be once I finally fuck you like you need. It makes you happy to hear that, doesn’t it?”

“Uh-huh.” Jack’s a little pressed for words at the moment, and he tugs at Mark’s shirt. “Mark, can you—can you kiss me, please? I really want it, I swear. Please kiss me.”

“I was under the impression you wanted to keep this strictly business,” Mark says darkly, reaching into Jack’s side table drawer for the lube he has no business knowing the whereabouts of. “You made it seem as though kissing was against the rules.”

That stings, and Jack frowns deeply at the reminder that Mark only does as Jack says, and he doesn’t have the emotional capabilities to appreciate this the way a real human would.

“It’s not,” he says breathlessly, tugging Mark even closer as the android slicks up his fingers. “This is me telling you that I want to be kissed, okay? Kiss me now. That’s an order.”

Mark doesn’t hesitate this time, dropping the bottle next to Jack’s shivering skin and pressing one finger to his entrance, his mouth clashing with Jack’s hungrily.

It should feel strange, getting fingerfucked into oblivion and kissed by a high functioning robot, and if you’d told Jack a month ago that his brand new online purchase would be doing this to him, he’d have laughed in your face and maybe thrown up in his mouth a little.

Mark stretches him open like he’s still planning on actually fucking Jack for real, and he kisses like he’s been doing it for ages, hot and wet and almost affectionate.

Jack presses himself as close as he possibly can with Mark’s fingers in him, and their kiss breaks after a couple minutes of nipping and biting and breathing into one another’s mouths.

Mark kisses his nose and his eyes and his cheeks, mouth spilling all manner of filthy things into the air and scattering them across Jack’s skin.

“Do you like me touching you like this, getting you ready to come? You’re so responsive like this, Sean, writhing on my fingers—just imagine how beautiful you’d be with my cock inside you. You’d be _perfect_.”

Jack’s thrashing back and forth on the sheets and his own cock is drooling precome all over Mark’s hand as the android fucks his fingers into him further, pressing down on that spot inside of him that Jack struggles to find so often.

Jack howls, and his hips buck upwards so violently that Mark has to pin him back down, mouth still running off about how fucking flawless Jack looks on his back this way.

“I heard you begging to get fucked a few days ago when I found you touching yourself,” Mark continues, rubbing at his prostate now that he’s found it with little trouble. “You were so desperate and needy and you wanted those fingers of yours to be mine, didn’t you? After all that complaining and denying me, I was right, wasn’t I, Sean?”

Jack knows he’s telling the truth, and it smarts to be proven wrong a by a computer with a fucking attitude and a high functioning sex drive, no less.

“Ye smug— _ah_ —fuckin’ bastard, shut up and make me come,” he groans, dangerously close to letting go already. He’s a mess and his body is strung tight, unused to being played and touched by another set of hands, and he’s tipping closer and closer to release with every slick thrust of Mark’s fingers.

“You avoidance only means that I’m right about everything.” Mark drags a finger up the vein in Jack’s cock and curls his fingers inside his ass, pressing up against his walls and making him scream, just as he’d promised.

“Ah, Mark, I’m gonna—I’m gonna come. God, fuck, more please!” Jack’s vision whites out and Mark lets him scream, fucking him with wet, lewd thrusts of his fingers until he’s overstimulated and sensitive.

Jack shakes all the way down to his toes, the best fucking orgasm he’s had since he can remember, and at the hands of the most attractive robot he’s ever laid eyes on in his life.

Mark is back to draping himself across Jack’s squirming torso, keeping him steady and close, working him through his orgasm even as Jack spurts onto Mark’s wrist and up onto his own chest.

“There, is that better?” Mark’s stroking his hair with the hand that’s still somewhat clean, and he withdraws his fingers from Jack slowly, leaving him empty and hollow. “Tell me how you feel Sean, have I made you happy?”

Jack’s head feels fuzzy again and he knows he’s a sticky wreck, but he can’t even think about moving or forming coherent sentences.

“Thank you,” he whispers groggily, tongue heavy and thick in his mouth. “I feel better now, Mark. Thank you.”

“That’s good.” Jack can feel Mark leaving the bed and he whines unhappily, missing the warm weight almost immediately.

A moment later, Mark is back and he’s dutifully wiping Jack clean, ever the attentive companion, but Jack barely registers the damp coolness of the rag. He just wants Mark to hold him close and let him sleep.

“That’s good,” Mark says again, but he sounds like he’s praising Jack and Jack can’t help but smile to himself. “Good boy. You’re so good for me, Sean. Exactly as I’d predicted.”

Jack has no idea what any of that means, but he’s sinking back into unconsciousness and Mark’s curling up beside him again, wrapping Jack in the warm cocoon of his arms.

-.-

The moment Jack’s eyes open, he immediately knows something’s wrong.

His spine creaks as he sits up and the sheets pool in his lap. Everything feels stiff and the light is slightly off color, like his perception of reality is altered somehow.

“Fuck,” he says to himself, then once again, louder. “Fuck, _no_.”

“Sean, what’s the matter?”

Jack remains sitting up in bed, lightheaded and shocked at himself and his traitorous fucking body.

“What did you do to me last night?” he says lowly, hands curled around the bedsheets. He’s humiliated and shaking, unable to believe what his memory is feeding him.

“I did as you asked,” Mark replies, sitting up and leaning towards Jack. He’s as gorgeous as ever, even in the mornings, and just looking at him makes Jack’s skin crawl. “We did not actually have sex, in case your memory fails you, but you requested that I get you off and I did as I was told. You seemed to appreciate it just before you fell asleep.”

He’s sore and there’s a lingering wetness down between his cheeks that reminds him of the way Mark had held him down and fucked him senseless with his fingers, much to Jack’s delight. The thought of it makes his face heat.

“I shouldn’t have let you,” he murmurs, and Mark sits up straighter.

“I swear I did not act against your wishes, Sean.” He’s trying to be reassuring, but the sound of his voice alone is messing with Jack’s head. Something doesn’t feel right.

“We shouldn’t have done anything last night. You’re just a machine, you’re not even a real person. I’m better than this, you know.”

“Better than what?” Mark is genuinely confused, and his hair falls into his face, soft and dark and Jack knows how every inch of that hair feels beneath his hands, in great detail. “I do not understand your anxiety. Please explain.”

“I’m better than someone who willingly sleeps with a fucking robot,” Jack stumbles over the words and shoves out of bed, the now freezing air of his bedroom reminding him that he’s still completely naked. “I don’t need you, I thought I made that clear last week.”

Jack can’t see Mark’s face because he can’t bring himself to look that way, but the confusion doesn’t drain from Mark’s voice.

“I thought I had done well enough last night while you were so frustrated,” Mark sounds like he can’t make heads or tails of Jack’s sudden discontent. “You responded positively to my advances. You asked me to kiss you. I followed all of you commands and you are still unhappy.”

“Shut up.” Jack wants to be alone. He wants to be alone so desperately he can taste it in his mouth. “I’m fucking sick of you and your manipulative bullshit. I don’t know what you’re up to but I’m over it. Go away, Mark. Go to sleep.”

He turns to spit the words at Mark and his robot’s face slackens into something like disbelief, and then there’s a soft whirring sound and Mark says, “Affirmative.”

His whole body shuts down, and then he’s slumping against the pillows, still and silent.

Jack feels incredibly hollow. He buries his face in his hands and crumples down onto the bed next to Mark’s stiff, cooling body. His pulse races, and there’s a weird heat in his stomach, alive and violent inside him. It tastes like shame and guilt in his mouth.

The atmosphere in the room thins and dissolves the moment Mark goes offline, and the buzzing beneath Jack’s skin comes to an abrupt halt.

Jack is alone again, but this time by his own choice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading, and we might get a bit more plotty and a bit more twisted in the next chapter, though I'm still hoping to keep this from running on for too long. Hope you all enjoyed and feel free to tell me what you think Mark might be up to. ;) Much love!


	3. he's a fiend for attention and i'm a guilty dealer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jack is forced to re-think his stance on Mark's intentions.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is horrifyingly late and horrifyingly long. I don't know exactly what I accomplished in this chapter, if anything, but I did my best. I PROMISE the creepier stuff will come into play next time around, now that I've got Jack's thoughts moving forward. He just needs to give Mark a bit of an opening.
> 
> Title is from Mad at Myself, by ISSUES.

Jack hadn’t known what to do with Mark’s body.

He hadn’t been able to leave him there, still and silent, looking as though he were just sleeping like normal. He had no place to put him where Jack wouldn’t see him every time he walked through the house, and he couldn’t keep him on the bed.

Jack had sat there on the edge of his mattress, numb, and considered his options.

Mark wouldn’t fit back in his original packaging, and he had no charging station or designated area in which Jack could comfortably store him. Jack couldn’t stand the thought of setting him in a corner and having to see him there, drained of power and speech, all because Jack was too much of a coward to face his own issues.

Mark weighed a fuckton, he’d discovered, dragging his dead weight towards a storage closet he barely used. Propping him up against the wall, settling his useless limbs so that they weren’t spread out listlessly, it all felt so _morbid_.

He’d sat there on the dusty carpet for a moment, heart twinging in his chest. Mark’s arm had brushed against his and Jack had been reminded that not once had Mark’s appearance revealed a single glitch or flaw in its design.

His skin was seamless and his hair felt so real Jack could only wonder whether or not it grew the same way a real human’s did. Mark had been warm and alive and strangely sarcastic in ways Jack had never imagined a robot could be.

Sure, his personality had been spotty, and his fixation with Jack and the concept of sex had been nothing short of overwhelming, but he’d been human enough to fill some kind of void.

Jack hadn’t been sure he’d been ready for that void to be filled so quickly, or by someone so willing.

“I’m sorry,” he’d said, as though Mark’s quiet, dark brain could even register his apology. “You weren’t…what I expected.”

Mark hadn’t answered.

After that, Jack had thrown himself into his work. He’d started stockpiling videos, recording more frequently and drinking more coffee. He’d fallen asleep on the couch more than once, shirt riding up against the sticky leather, the controller slipping from his fingers and landing face down on the floor.

Things had been quiet again, but this time the silence had been heavy. Jack had known the difference between loneliness when company was absent, and the silence that followed another’s departure.

This was definitely the latter.

Jack had let dishes pile up in the sink for three days before he’d realized no one was doing them. He’d spent years looking out for himself, yet after two fucking weeks of having Mark take care of him, he’d forgotten how to accomplish basic tasks. He’d spent hours upon hours editing the endless stream of footage on his computer, and re-learning the new filing system Mark had implemented onto his desktop when he wasn’t looking.

It rained for a week straight and Jack had left the house once to get groceries, just because he was sick of eating frozen foods and takeout, but when he’d returned his shoes had been ruined and the bags were half soaked in the downpour.

Now, it’s been almost two weeks since Mark’s been shut down and Jack’s awake at some ungodly hour of the night, sifting through gameplay footage and blinking wearily at the clock. At some point, he’d moved the coffeemaker directly into his recording space, and it’s been beeping on and off, every time he refills the pot or has to clean out yet another spoiled brew.

The temptation to turn Mark back on is stronger than ever.

He’s been wrestling with it since he’d shut the door to Mark’s prison cell, the lonely closet he uses to store old bins and boxes of stuff he has no longer has any use for.

There’s no reason for any of it: his preoccupation with Mark gathering dust in the dark, the feeling like there should be someone looking over his shoulder at all times, his sudden intolerance for being alone.

Mark is a robot, not a person. Not a friend, not a lover, not a jigsaw piece missing from Jack’s metaphorical puzzle.

At most, he’s a distraction. At the least, a housekeeper.

Hell, cleaning the house feels like too much work for Jack’s hands and brain to accomplish, but Mark? He could do it in the blink of an eye and Jack would never have known his floors were dirty.

Shopping is a chore and cooking is an effort that doesn’t seem worth it in the end. He’s tired, he’s lonely, and he’s self destructing for absolutely no reason, all because he had the gall to buy himself a new ‘best friend’ off the internet and then lock him up for getting too handsy.

The colors on screen swim in front of his eyes and Jack glances at his phone. It’s still late, so late that he’s confident the hour could be considered early morning, but he knows some nights his old friends were as sleepless as him.

Should he?

‘ _You need someone_ ,’ his brain supplies unhelpfully, as though nudging him forward with obvious truths is going to make the stale taste of isolation any sweeter.

He hasn’t spoken to most of his old college buddies in over a year, but he’s desperate—go figure—and most of Jack’s significant life decisions are made long past the time the sun has set. After all, Mark had been an impulse buy sometime three hours and two bags of chips deep into a late night anime marathon.

Jack opens up his messages and taps one out to one of his better friends from his college days, an old bandmate who’d never really held a grudge against anyone and was always out for a good time.

Jack hasn’t had a good time in what feels like forever.

He presses send and goes back to editing, half hoping the phone will buzz by morning light, and silently wondering if it’ll remain unbothered.

-.-

Jack’s friend is excited to hear from him—maybe a little too excited—and he offers to take Jack out for lunch, just to catch up.

Jack says yes, and spends the rest of the day freaking the fuck out about it.

He knows he’s famous, knows that’ll be a topic of discussion between them almost from the beginning, and he’s torn between wanting to break that image and retain it. He doesn’t want his friend to focus on his success like a barrier between them, but his anxiety spikes at the thought of having to explain his reasons for never keeping in touch.

Internet fame is a lot less glamorous once you can see through the other side of the screen, and on the other side of Jack’s screen is a pile of dishes from the past two days and a guy who forgot to shower right up until his shirt started sticking to the desk.

Jack leaves the house less than satisfied with how he looks, and the whole way to the restaurant he thinks about how Mark would have told him how to dress, how to breathe, how he could ‘take the edge off’ before Jack even bothered to go out.

Knowing Mark, he’d have found some way to convince Jack to stay home, and it’s that knowledge that drives him faster towards their meetup point.

If he’s going to do better he has to stop thinking about Mark, at least until he’s strong enough on his own to turn his android back on without feeling the need to get too attached.

Jack’s friend is cooler than he remembers, despite how enthused he seems at Jack’s choice in career, and lunch turns out to be fairly unstressful. Jack invites him back to his house to show him his gaming setup and challenge him to a few rounds of something mind numbing and rambunctious.

He means for it to be easy and informal, something they can bond over while they get to know each other again and Jack pretends he hasn’t been mired in work and temporary depression for the past couple of weeks.

Once or twice, he thinks about bringing up Mark, about sharing his short time with the android with his old friend, but he can’t quite work up the courage.

If the guy were to go off and rifle through Jack’s rooms, he’d find the stiff body of an unnamed man lying curled up in Jack’s closet, and there’d be no good explanation for that, even with an introduction.

Mark is _his_ , his dilemma to keep and protect, to lament over at night when he’s ankle deep in recording and there’s nothing else for him to do. How could he explain what had happened between them to his friend?

_‘Yeah, I bought this robot off the internet because Google made me an offer, and when he got here it turned out he just wanted to have sex with me.’_

Yeah, no.

‘ _All he did was follow me around the house and clean everything. I let him finger fuck me in the middle of the night once, and then I had a massive freakout the next morning and stuffed his body in a closet.’_

Even the idea of telling his friend that Jack has no use for Mark at the moment doesn’t feel right, because for starters it’s a fucking lie, and it’s still fifteen kinds of strange to admit to someone you’re comfortable with keeping the unconscious equivalent of a full grown man locked away in your house.

They play video games late into the evening, and Jack offers to let his friend crash at his place. Having someone, _anyone_ nearby is an improvement upon his life so far, even if it’s just a distant friend sleeping in his guest room.

Jack buries himself in his blankets and thinks about what would happen if he woke Mark up while there was someone else in the house. It’s completely inane, especially after his resolute decision to keep Mark’s existence on the down low to his real life friends, but the thought is there, blinking furiously at him like a red warning light.

He’s never seen Mark angry or furious, just agitated and intimidating, but Mark had made it clear more than once that he’d had no interest in people outside of Jack. Whether that meant he saw other humans as a threat or merely a nuisance, Jack doesn’t know, but the temptation to find out terrifies him.

He rolls over and covers his head with the pillow, blocking out the white noise of the night and the burgeoning desire to do something he’ll regret.

-.-

By the time Jack’s friend leaves the next morning, Jack feels as exhausted as ever and only mildly satisfied with his progress.

He’d enjoyed the reunion no doubt, but once his friend is gone the house is as empty as always and there’s nothing more to do. He’d promised to keep in touch and hang out again, yeah, but there’s so much still wrong with the silence all around him that Jack hesitates to call the past 24 hours a success of any kind.

His place is still only half clean, and he’s recorded enough over the past couple weeks to keep him free for days upon days, but the prospect of a day empty of interaction or work seems bleak.

The closet sings to him, and Jack’s skin crawls.

He wants to see Mark. He needs to see Mark. It’s all he can think about.

Mark is just _there_ , sitting by himself in Jack’s closet and there’s no reason he shouldn’t be right here next to Jack, warm and pushy and taking up space.

_‘If you turn him back on, he’s still going to want to fuck you eventually.’_ The whispering in his head is back, and sometimes Jack hates his subconscious. _‘Nothing will be different from before.’_

It’s true, but before was different, not unbearable. Whatever stasis Jack’s reached now, it’s a regression from how he was before he’d even invited Mark into his house. Going back to the way things were—frustrating, nagging, littered with sexual tension—it’s a step forward, if nothing else.

Even if it means living with a robot whose seduction skills trump Jack’s ability to put forth a valid argument.

Jack’s in front of the closet in record time, feet carrying him towards the forbidden space as if on autopilot, and he stops with his hand on the knob.

He hasn’t seen Mark for two weeks, not even his body. For just a second, Jack leans his head up against the cool white wood of the door and braces himself. Mark is going to wake up, and he’s going to be confused, maybe even apologetic or angry.

Jack has no idea what to expect. He’s never shut someone down in a fit of panic and had to turn them back on two weeks later and explain himself. It’s new territory for him, so to speak.

The door opens easily—too easily—and Jack stares down at Mark’s body slumped near the wall. He looks the same, beautiful and silent, a living doll with skin and hair and razor sharp eyes that could pin Jack in place were they open and lucid.

Jack wants to see them again.

There’s no dust, no cobwebs, just Mark; clad in sweatpants and a t-shirt that was always too big for Jack anyways. He leans down and tilts Mark’s head back just a little, fingers sliding over his skin with ease.

“Mark,” he says softly, then once again, with more fervor. “Mark, wake up. It’s me.”

He snaps his fingers once and there’s a moment of anticipation in his lungs where they refuse to inflate. Jack feels like the closet is a vacuum and he’s being sucked into the grainy darkness. His mouth is dry.

Mark’s eyes blink open.

“Shit.” Jack sinks lower onto the carpet and all but melts in on himself. “Fuck, I thought it might not work.”

Mark twists his head, still leaning against the wall and takes Jack in, every crumbled, messy inch of him.

“Sean,” he says, and Jack’s spine has a disgustingly electric reaction to the sound of his voice, “it’s been almost two weeks since I was last active. Why?”

“I don’t…look, just shut up.” He’d almost forgotten the way Mark used his given name, and not his nickname. “Don’t give me shit for this, okay?”

Mark doesn’t seem to take that as a hard and fast command, because he continues.

“My readings indicate that you are not in good health.” His voice is barely above a murmur, but it’s cool and calculated as ever. “What have you been doing without me?”

Jack reaches out to touch his face, because Mark’s been the closest thing to real human contact he’s had in ages, and these two weeks of solitude in between his meltdown and now were all the more excruciating after finally being able to touch someone again.

“It’s been so fucking quiet,” he replies, fingers brushing Mark’s familiar stubble. “Like, I’m the loudest goddamn person in the world on my own and this place has been So. Fucking. Quiet.”

Mark blinks at him, but he leans into the touch just the tiniest bit.

“If I am correct, my servers indicate that the emotion you’ve been feeling is ‘loneliness’.” Mark says the word like he’s reading it off a dictionary page. “You became used to a certain way of life during our time together, and when you shut me down, your mind refused to adjust accordingly.”

“You’re just as pretentious as I remember you,” Jack tells him, but he doesn’t remove his hand from Mark’s face. Neither of them has moved.

“You missed me.”

“Didn’t I tell you to shut up?” Jack shoves him a little, but his body moves him closer out of instinct.

“Yes, but you didn’t mean it.”

Mark looks at him seriously. Jack knows he’s being a little bitch again—it’s just his nature.

“I can only imagine what you’ve done to yourself and this house while I was in stasis,” his robot says, as though he’s scolding Jack for sins he already knows have been committed. “You do not fare well on your own, Sean McLoughlin.”

Mark’s been active for a solid minute and Jack’s already getting that urge to tear his own hair out. Compared to the bleakness of the past couple weeks, it feels like a step up in the world.

“It’s not like I blew my house up or anything, give me a break.” He frowns, offended. “I’m not that incompetent without you.”

Mark’s eyes glint like he’s picking apart Jack’s denial internally, in preparation for a crusade to prove him wrong once and for all.

“I’ll be the judge of that.”

-.-

Mark glides through his house with a keen eye, examining every surface as though he’s a health inspector and Jack’s a repeat D-grade offender. Jack follows along faithfully, embarrassed at how quickly he’d managed to let himself go during Mark’s…deactivation period, and slightly miffed about how Mark treats every room in the house like he owns it.

“When was the last time you did any laundry?” Mark stops in front of Jack’s laundry basket like it’s a roadblock, and to be honest, it kind of is.

“Who do you think you are, my mother?”

“I asked you a question, Sean. I know you know the answer.” Mark doesn’t look like he’s angry, but maybe being a condescending prick is his way of getting back at Jack for locking him up for two weeks.

“I forgot, okay?” Jack feels small and mildly disgusted with himself as he nudges a grimy pair of jeans with his toe. “I just…didn’t feel up to doing it.”

Mark regards him very carefully, and sets to work putting a new load of clothes in the washer like he’s an incredibly mechanical mother figure. It’s weird as hell.

“I don’t remember you being this careless with your upkeep before,” he comments, picking through piles of t-shirts and week old socks. “Internal data scans of your brain activity show a chemical imbalance that has yet to be resolved, and your entire apartment is in disarray.”

“I don’t need a run-down of all the ways I’ve managed to be unproductive in the past couple of weeks, thanks,” Jack snaps, face flushing darkly.

Mark keeps sorting through his laundry, as if Jack had never spoken.

“Whatever upset that occurred when you chose to deactivate me seems to have affected you deeply,” he continues. “You did not take care of yourself while I was inactive, and it seems I’m going to have to rectify that.”

Jack glares down at the wooden floor, unable to meet Mark’s eyes or watch him clean up the mess Jack hadn’t been able to bring himself to tackle.

“Sorry for making your job so much harder, I guess,” he grumbles under his breath. Then, louder: “You don’t have to do this you know.”

Mark glances up at him, arms full of clothes and back hunched over the mess on the floor. His eyes soften, somehow.

“You misunderstand me,” he tells Jack, closing the door on the washer behind him and standing up to his full height. “I don’t dislike taking care of you. What good would it do me to resent you when my only purpose here is to ensure that you are happy?”

Jack feels more shame creep up his spine, and he hates that Mark has to see the wreckage of Jack’s two weeks of independence, even if there’s no one else for his robot to conspire with about it.

“If your goal is to try and make me happy, then you’re going to be working for a long fucking time,” he says. It’s just the truth.

Mark doesn’t appear fazed, as usual.

“That was my plan, Sean.”

Jack’s head snaps up, and Mark’s staring back at him, brutally honest and intense in that way only he can be sometimes.

“It is my opinion that you need something more than just a housekeeper at the moment.” The android’s gaze doesn’t waver. “You are still upset.”

More painful truths. Jack’s brain balks at the idea of cuddling up to Mark, yet at the same time his chest warms to it with surprising amounts of vigor.

“If you’re going to offer me sex again, then I’d have to say that now’s not really the time,” he begins, but Mark shakes his head immediately.

“In the future, sexual activity may again be beneficial to you, but not right now.” Mark doesn’t appear to be pained by the words, and Jack wonders if deactivating him for so long reset him onto a completely different warpath than before. “All of my readings indicate that what you are in need of at the moment is simple human companionship.”

Jack’s stomach growls.

“And a meal,” Mark finishes. Jack has to stifle a laugh.

“Will you—will you cook for me again?” He still feels ashamed asking for help after such a terrible time on his own, but Mark only seems to greet all of Jack’s requests with as much enthusiasm as ever.

“Of course.” Mark answers him like there was never any question at all, and the sick feeling in Jack’s gut subsides, just a little.

-.-

Mark bypasses any further cleaning after Jack finally eats, though it looks like the amount of strength it takes him to do so is colossal.

Jack flicks on the television and Mark doesn’t just join him on the couch, he makes himself right at home.

“Mark, what the fuck?” Jack squirms slightly as Mark pulls him into his lap, arms wrapping around Jack’s back and shoulders like twine. “You never said we were actually going to cuddle.”

Mark pulls him closer still.

“You need to be held,” he maintains, and his tone of voice leaves no room for argument. “You are touch starved and severely depleted of company and contact. If I were to let you be, it would be a mistake on both of our parts.”

Jack huffs into Mark’s neck, resting his cheek on the fine indentations of his collarbone.

“You know, you’re way too damn good at gutting a guy and hanging him out to dry,” he complains mildly. “Haven’t you ever heard of being subtle? I do have a little bit of pride somewhere deep down inside.”

“This is not a situation in which lying to you would do me any good, so why would I?” Mark shifts until he’s lying back against the armrest of the couch with Jack curled up in his arms, hips resting comfortably between Mark’s legs.

“Lying to my face and actually using some tact aren’t the same things,” Jack points out, but he knows a losing battle when he sees one. Subtle nuances of any kind seem to be far, far above Mark’s head. It must be a robot thing.

He dozes off a bit, lulled into a sense of floaty thoughtfulness by the whir in Mark’s chest and the warmth of his skin. It’s the most at peace he’s felt since he’d woken up to find himself naked next to Mark, and he refuses to analyze that thought any further.

An indeterminate amount of time later, Mark’s slow, rhythmic stroking on his back comes to an abrupt halt, and he stiffens beneath Jack’s sprawled out form.

“Sean,” he murmurs, and Jack snuffles blearily against Mark’s shirt.

“Huh?” he moans.

“Sean.” Mark’s voice is sharp, jostling. “Whose shirt is that?”

“What?” Jack wakes up a little more, disgruntled at his pillow’s sudden lack of cooperation. “What shirt?”

“The one on the chair over there.” Mark’s voice is clipped so short it sounds like he’s picking his words out one by one at their roots. “The blue one.”

Jack tilts his head until he can generally follow Mark’s line of sight, and his eyesight snags on the bright blue fabric of the t-shirt draped over one of his lounge chairs.

“Oh that?” he asks, furrowing his brow. “That belongs to my friend. He was here just last night. Left this morning right before I turned you back on. He spilt food all over his shirt so I loaned him one of mine and I guess he forgot to take his with him, why?”

Mark is silent for a long moment, and Jack becomes acutely aware that he hasn’t been simulating any breathing motions the entire time they’ve been lying here together.

“You’ve never told me about this ‘friend’.” That tone of voice is still there, ruining the atmosphere of coziness and causal affection. “Why was he here, Sean?”

Jack blinks.

“Uh—because I was lonely?” he offers, confused at Mark’s borderline hostility. His brain flashes back to last night, lying in bed and wondering whether or not introducing Mark to his friend would’ve been a bad idea or not.

From the way Mark’s hands are tightening on Jack’s shoulders, he’s going to go with ‘worst idea ever’.

“Why didn’t you just reactivate me, instead?” Mark says the words like he doesn’t really understand them, and between the two of them they feel awkward. Jack doesn’t see the problem.

“I thought I could make things work without you,” Jack admits, and the embarrassment from before is back to darken his mental doorstep. “I figured that maybe my problem was not having enough friends, so I invited my old bandmate to hang out and stay the night.”

“Did he sleep with you?”

Jack props himself up the best he can with Mark holding onto him so diligently, and gives his robot a bewildered look.

“No?” he says, voice cracking. “He slept in the guest room and all he did was hug me once. He’s just my friend—we’re not, we’re not like that.”

Mark’s grip doesn’t loosen, and he doesn’t seem satisfied with that declaration.

“You didn’t have any need for him, not when you had me.” Mark is adamant, but Jack can hear the layers of confusion tainting his words. “I don’t understand why you didn’t just come to me instead.”

Jack isn’t faring any better at this sudden turn in conversation. “I mean, I was kind of having a crisis,” he explains slowly. “I was looking for other options, you know—playing the field? I need real friends too, even if I kind of suck ass at keeping them around.”

That only seems to upset Mark even more.

“Obviously he wasn’t suitable for you.” He slides a palm up to grip Jack’s shoulder, constricting. “Not an hour later you chose to reactivate me and entrust me again with your well being. I doubt this ‘friend’ of yours has the capabilities I do.”

Jack can’t help the face he makes. “Is this some sort of ‘big dick’ competition to you?” he prods, amused but underwhelmed by Mark’s transparency. “Are you jealous that I willingly interacted with another human for once?”

It’s kind of insulting really, that Mark’s already pegged him as being so anti-social that the thought of Jack socializing with anyone other than maybe a store associate is downright outlandish to him. If anything, it’s proof that trying to broaden his horizons once again was for the best.

“What you refer to as jealousy is merely my concern that you still don’t find my companionship satisfying.” Mark’s rebuttal is pitiful in that way only people wracked with petty jealousy can achieve. “Why would you settle for someone only ambiguously suited to entertain you when I am right here?”

“Oh my god.” Jack is struggling to process Mark’s transformation from affectionate companion into self-entitled ‘nice guy’ stereotype. “Did you really just ask me why I would rather hang out with him when I could be with you? Have we come to that already? I thought it took longer than a couple of weeks to hit the stage where you release your true inner douchebag.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Mark counters, sitting up and adjusting their proximity until he’s got Jack straddling his lap. “I don’t like it when you trust others to do my job for me.”

“Which means what, exactly?” Jack feels like they’re going around in circles all of a sudden. If it weren’t for Mark’s arms holding him in place, he might topple over from metaphorical dizziness.

“It means you don’t need him.” The declaration hangs and stales in the air, and Mark looks deadly serious, so serious Jack wonders whether or not he’d have thrown Jack’s friend out of the house on sight.

Mark’s fingers press into the sharp jut of Jack’s hips and his thumbs massage away the discomfort, as though he’s trying to soften the blow of his words with the weight of his hands.

“I’m sure you’ve attached yourself to the idea of him, but he will only disappoint you in the end.” Mark’s timbre is smooth silk obscuring sharp teeth, and the sound churns its way through Jack’s gut. “Just let me take care of you, Sean. It’s easier.”

Jack swallows hard, but he shakes his head.

“I can’t abandon all my friends and family, Mark. That’s not how real life works.”

It’s incredibly unfair how hard it is to say no to someone so beautiful, someone who looks at Jack the way Mark is right now. Telling Mark off when Jack’s hardly a foot away from those eyes and that mouth—it’s a fucking travesty and an unexpected one at that.

He ducks back down until his head’s tucked nicely between Mark’s neck and chin, and curls into his chest in a soothing attempt at comfort and affection. Maybe Mark’s just feeling a little unloved after being locked away for awhile. Do robots have needs too?

Jack has no idea, but he figures there’s nothing a little placation can’t fix.

Mark begins stroking his hair, but there’s an edge to it now that wasn’t present before. His touch is heavier, steeled with intent, and his gaze remains fixed above Jack’s head in the direction of the offending shirt.

Later that night, Jack finds it shredded in the trash. Mark says nothing, and Jack doesn’t ask.

-.-

Over the next two days Mark combs through Jack’s entire apartment: cleaning floors, organizing clothes, and generally poking his nose where it doesn’t belong. He’s a sniffer dog on a mission and he’s caught the scent of yet another twenty-something who can’t seem to get his life together.

Jack would honestly complain more about not being able to find his things now that they’re back in their proper places, or about Mark fussing over him every time he gets a whiff of Jack’s anxiety cropping up, but he has a cute robot more than willing to do all of his housework and who is he to say no to that?

“Why did Google make you so…attractive?” he asks sometime after dinner while Mark’s planted on the floor, steadfastly fixing the crooked leg on Jack’s coffee table. He’s wearing basketball shorts and one of Jack’s old shirts, because ever since Jack learned that Mark didn’t feel the need to change clothes on a daily basis, he’d enforced the rule that Mark couldn’t go longer than two days without putting on a new shirt at least.

Jack’s cross legged on the couch with his headphones draped around his neck, only half paying attention to Dark Souls while Mark works on his furniture.

They look pretty domestic, all things considered, and only the fact that Mark happens to be a robot with a hard on for cleaning supplies disrupts the fantasy.

“Define attractive.” Mark’s not looking at him, but Jack thinks he might be smirking.

“Uh—above average?” Jack shrugs his shoulders. “I know you’re a robot and all, but did they base your looks off of a real human’s? Your face is so flawless it looks like they actually made it in a computer.”

“I was modeled in a computer and made in a state of the art factory plant, but my features were programmed and blended from those of real humans.” He blinks up at Jack. “Much like yours, actually.”

Jack frowns. “Huh?” he asks dumbly, then shakes his head. “Oh yeah, I guess you’re right. But you still haven’t answered my question.”

Mark sets down the tools and straightens his shoulders, as though he actually gets tense sometimes and needs to stretch. “Beauty is only subjective,” he says. “Why do you find me attractive?”

Jack isn’t really prepared to get deep about this conversation.

“Dude, I just wanted to know why they gave you a nice ass and permanent smolder instead of just making you look, I dunno, average,” he replies, pressing pause on his game. “It’s not that I’m complaining about having a really hot…housemate, but they didn’t have to go that extra mile, you know?”

“You seem to forget that I am for more than just cleaning things,” Mark tells him smoothly. “When you stated your preferences in your order form, they matched my looks and demeanor as closely to your ideal companion as possible. Myself and other models were not intended to only be used as machines—our purpose is to function as though we are human, and for all intents and purposes, I _am_.”

Well.

Jack tosses aside his controller and leans forward. “Wait,” he says, fixing Mark with an incredulous look. “Do you actually believe that you’re a real life person?”

Mark returns the look, but with less amusement and more carefully schooled patience.

“I know that I am not a human in the conventional sense, but I was created with the intention of superseding what the average human is capable of, all while maintaining a particular façade.” He tilts his chin back at Jack. “I am meant to fill as many voids as possible in your life, and ideally, I could fill every one.”

“So what, you’re a super-human forced to walk among us mortals and bow to our every whim? That doesn’t sound all that appealing.”

There’s that inkling of something uncomfortable again—like Jack’s the protagonist in the first act of a doomsday film, where a whole race of robots rebel against their creators and assume total control of the universe. He blames his insomnia and too many hours of late night television for most of his paranoia, but even admitting the truth out loud sounds…dirty.

Mark doesn’t even frown. “I am capable of multitasking and emoting simultaneously, and my purpose is to ultimately satisfy my user throughout the duration of my service. I am happy to do so, but until I can provide for you fully, I cannot consider my work to be adequate.”

_Yikes_. Jack blows out a breath and looks up at the ceiling. Robots are a fucking headache and a half.

“I’m pretty sure I’ve said this before, but if that’s the case then I don’t think your work will ever be completed.” He gestures intently to the house around them. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m kind of a wreck.”

Mark stands up and abandons his task, gliding over to sit next to Jack on the couch and mirroring his position with ease. He cups Jack’s face in both his hands.

The autonomous affection is still a hot point for Jack—something he can’t quite wrap his head around properly whenever Mark lays hands on him—but he doesn’t pull away.

“I’m yours until you no longer want me,” Mark says seriously, and the inflection is slightly off, but the sincerity is there. “We do not grow tired of those we serve.”

Jack fights off a stupid smile with an answering snort, and he pats Mark’s hand on his cheek. “Okay, not gonna lie, that was kind of creepy. You went all hive-mind on me for a moment and I’m gonna have to ask you to stop.”

“I would not lie.” There’s no waver in Mark’s expression. “I was created for you and you only, and no one else. I am your perfect companion.”

 Jack huffs out a laugh. “I hate to break it to you, but one day I’ll be a lot older and bitchier and probably a million times more self entitled. I doubt you’ll enjoy being with me as much then.”

“In forty years, will you still be Sean McLoughlin?”

Mark still looks serious and Jack raises an eyebrow at him.

“Yeah, an uglier, crankier Sean McLoughlin, but I’ll still be me, I guess.” This is a weird conversation. Mark doesn’t follow the pattern of human relations the way he probably should, and interacting with him is like listening to a song with an instrument played just slightly off key.

“Then I will still enjoy you,” Mark says, like it’s just that simple.

“It’s not that simple,” Jack tries to explain, but then he stops himself. Mark is still a computer, deep down inside, and he’s been programmed to act a certain way, right down to his core. Much like the modem Jack uses to play his games upstairs, Mark’s not likely to be re-programmable past a certain point, and trying to get him to re-think his stance on the future and on Jack is almost definitely a lost cause.

Mark waits, eyes searching. Jack just sighs.

“Never mind,” he says, leaning into the touch. “Just—never mind, Mark. You’re really good looking, okay? That’s all I wanted to say.”

Mark’s half smile looks crooked in the grainy light of Jack’s living room, and it’s the closest thing to a physical flaw Jack can see in him.

“Thank you,” he says, and then stops, thinking. “Yes, that’s what I wanted to s—” He stops again, and takes a deep breath Jack knows he doesn’t need, locking their eyes. “ _Thank you_ , Sean.”

“Anytime.” The awkwardness in the room is back, except Jack’s pretty sure he’s the only one who feels it given how Mark’s smiling right now. It’s just more background music out of rhythm, courtesy of his own personal android friend.

Mark seems content to sit there touching him, which isn’t surprising or unusual, but Jack is fully human and you can only stare at someone for so long before it starts to get weird.

“If you want to,” he begins, searching for a way to break back through the silence, “I could—I could let you come out shopping with me, the next time I go. I need groceries and a new pair of jeans, and I think you need to get used to being around other people.”

Mark’s expression brightens and dims in the span of about two seconds, but Jack tries not to let it bother him.

“I would be more than willing to come with you,” Jack can sense a ‘but’ coming somewhere in there, “so long as none of your so called ‘friends’ are accompanying us.”

Jack has no reason to be surprised that Mark is this predictable: no people, no bullshit, just Jack. It must be engraved somewhere on his hard drive.

“This isn’t really something you invite your friends out to do,” Jack informs him, deadpan. “It’s not like we’re glossing up our lips and going on a fun-filled mall outing together. I need bread and new pants. That’s it.”

“That sounds perfectly reasonable,” Mark answers, in an incredibly understanding ‘I’ll be on my best behavior’ tone of voice. That, at least, seems to have gotten through his head.

Jack clasps their hands together and squeezes them tight. He really, really hopes he isn’t making a mistake by doing this, but Mark’s going to have to leave the house sooner or later, and there’s no way in hell anyone’s going to look at him and think ‘ _robot’_ , so he should be fine, right?

_‘Right_ ,’ he thinks, _‘and in act two of the doomsday movie, the robots seize control of the government and the human race is considerably fucked. Foolproof plan.’_

-.-

“Would you quit glaring holes into everyone’s skulls? It’s just a fucking mall, dude.”

Mark doesn’t even look at him.

“If you had the capabilities I do, you would not feel so comfortable out in public,” he says, eyes tracking the pace of a woman laden with shopping bags from at least five different stores. “An astounding number of people in this mall appear to be up to no good.”

Jack rolls his eyes for the fiftieth time in as many minutes, and links Mark’s arm with his in an attempt to leash him properly.

“Surprise surprise, the general public is sketchy as hell,” he gripes. “C’mon, we’ve been here ten minutes and you’re already getting us weird looks. I don’t want security chasing us down in the food court because you stared at someone’s kid for five seconds too long.”

Mark mumbles something about children under the age of ten being statistically more capable of destruction than any other age group, but reluctantly follows Jack into the Express store.

Jack doesn’t normally care about buying designer clothes or expensive brands with flashy tags. He just wants stuff that’ll last longer than a year, because the less time he has to spend picking out clothes, the better.

“Ok,” he turns to Mark and crosses his arms. “I’m gonna grab a few pairs of jeans and try them on, and you’re gonna hang around the store and not antagonize anyone, alright? I don’t wanna be here longer than twenty minutes at the most.”

Mark regards him coolly. “Keeping you safe is not, as you put it, ‘antagonizing’ anyone. I will be accompanying you to the dressing room and standing guard so that no one tries to barge in uninvited.”

Jack nods politely to a passing store attendant and frowns at Mark. His good mood—what little there was of it—is becoming increasingly strained, and he’s already regretting letting Mark out of the house and anywhere near the general public.

_Big_ mistake.

“The doors lock from the outside,” he hisses, trying not to alert anyone else to his rapidly diminishing patience. “No one is going to attack me or try to take advantage of me with my pants down while I’m trying on _jeans_. If you stand outside my door the associates are gonna think we’re trying to steal something.”

Mark glances quickly at a girl innocently folding shirts at a nearby table, and his face remains expressionless.

“If they try to accuse you of theft, then I will simply incapacitate them until you are able to escape,” he replies, and Jack has to resist the urge to smack himself across the forehead in the middle of a store.

“No,” he says forcefully. “No, fuck—Mark, we’re not doing that. No one is stealing anything, no one is trying to escape, and no one is loitering outside of the door while I change. I am trying on jeans, I am buying them, and we are _leaving_. Probably forever, seeing as how by the time we’re done here you’ll have gotten us banned from every store in the mall.”

Jack had made a quick detour into the GameStop just minutes prior in order to check out their new selections, and Mark had stood next to the Gears of War display and glared at the cashiers with an expression so dark one of them had started hovering nervously around the register.

He’d figured that maybe bringing Mark into crowded places wasn’t the best of ideas, especially after one of the associates had tapped him on the shoulder and informed him that his friend was ‘causing a disturbance’ and ‘making the ten year old customers nearly piss themselves’.

“If I bring you a selection of items while you are in the dressing rooms, will the employees think ill of us then?”

Jack sighs. He wants to go home. He’s got food stuffed in his backpack, a cramp in his left foot, and an overprotective robot who thinks it’s okay to feel him up in a grocery store and attempt to ward off every living human with only the power of his deadly gaze.

It’s been a long day, and it’s only 1 PM.

“No, I guess not,” he finally relents. “If you wanna bring me clothes or whatever while I’m in there, that’s fine—whatever keeps you from creeping on everyone else. Just don’t try and threaten a worker or try and bring me an entire rack of shirts, okay?”

Mark seems satisfied with that.

“Understood,” he says, then fixes Jack with a look. “You know, if you’d chosen to give me administrative privileges a few weeks ago, you could be at home playing games while I do all of your shopping for you. Clearly, being out in public with me stresses you out.”

Jack makes a rude noise. “You don’t say,” he replies, focusing in on a display of jeans in various sizes and styles. “What makes you think I’d be any less stressed out knowing you were out here all on your own?”

Mark rests one hand on his shoulder, as if that isn’t the creepiest thing he could ever do at a time like this.

“I would be perfectly safe,” he promises, grip tightening. “No harm would come to me and I could have your errands complete in a timespan much shorter than you could accomplish yourself.”

“It’s not _your_ well being I’m worried about,” Jack mutters, twisting away from Mark’s grip to grab the first two pairs of jeans he can find in his size. Mark’s been extra grabby ever since they’ve been out, and he’d tried to kiss Jack publicly in the grocery store somewhere near the frozen food aisles earlier today.

His complaint had been that there’d been a man staring at Jack ‘with suspiciously lewd intentions’, and Mark’s genius computer brain had decided that the only solution to the problem had been to convince the stranger that Jack was ‘taken’, so to speak.

He doesn’t know exactly what it says about him or Mark that his robot is under the impression that Jack is both helpless and okay with being groped in public. After the little accident with Mark walking in on him a few weeks ago, Jack’s got some inkling of the size of his exhibitionist kink, but that’s not something he’s willing to explore in the middle of the frozen pizza section of the grocery store.

“I’m going to try these on,” he informs Mark, who’s making intense eye contact with one of the security cameras in the corner, as though he’s trying to stare it willfully into submission. “I won’t be five minutes. You just keep eye-fucking that camera and don’t worry about a thing.”

He turns on his heel and makes a break for it, but not before Mark calls to his retreating back.

“I’d rather be fucking you, Sean.”

Jack walks faster, face burning hot and tingling with embarrassment. He hopes nobody heard Mark’s—pretty explicit—admission, but the store isn’t too crowded and most of the associates seem to be lurking elsewhere, so he figures he’s managed to evade that particular humiliation.

He’s been in the dressing room for all of two minutes when there’s a knock at the door. Jack stops with one foot halfway into Pants Option #1, and makes a face at the scratched wood in front of him.

“Yeah?” he asks, and Mark’s voice greets him immediately.

“Let me in, Sean. I brought you a new shirt.”

Jack heaves a disgruntled sigh and kicks the pants back off. For all his glaring and blustering around, Mark is needy as hell when it comes to wanting Jack’s company, and that’s really all there is to it.

“Hand them to me.” He opens the door just a hair and reaches out, but that’s all the opening Mark needs.

He shoves past the crack in the doorframe and Jack stumbles back as the android squeezes his way inside and shuts the door behind him. They’re in one of the bigger rooms near the back of the dressing area, cut off from the paths of the employees, so no one can really see both pairs of feet beneath the door. Still, Jack cringes at the possibility of being caught.

Mark tosses a couple of shirts—both in plain, solid colors—onto the bench and faces Jack, dark eyes narrowing.

“I know you’re displeased with me,” he begins, then pauses. Jack just stands there, feet blanketed by a pile of jeans.

“It would appear that I have not proven myself worthy of receiving admin permissions,” Mark restarts his confession. “You do not feel I am responsible or sociable enough to be around other humans.”

“Pretty much.” Jack doesn’t see any point in pulling his punches. He’s not angry with Mark, per se, because it’s not like he expected this to go off without a hitch, but he’s frustrated at the lack of progress they seem to be making. “You don’t have to like other people, but you at least have to tolerate them. If I thought anyone was going to hurt me, I’d let you know.”

Mark shakes his head. He still looks as though he’s trying to muster up some sort of real remorse for his gravely inept social skills, but something else seems to be bothering him.

“You are not as safe as you think you are, Sean,” he says, and his concern is genuine enough, however misplaced it may be. “I do not trust any human I see, and neither should you.”

Jack already knows Mark thinks this, but hearing him say it so point blank drives the truth home a little harder.

“Okay, and why is that exactly?” he asks, playing along. Might as well give Mark the chance to explain himself while they’ve got time. He still wishes they could be having this conversation on the way home, or in the safety of Jack’s apartment, but Mark doesn’t appear to want to budge.

“They’re reckless, untrustworthy,” Mark tells him with an edge to his voice, like he’s accusing all of humanity of an unforgivable crime. “Humans have no higher purpose but to search aimlessly for one, and in pursuit of that purpose, they create chaos.”

Jack holds up a hand.

“We’re in a fucking dressing room and I’m trying to go shopping,” he says as plainly as possible. “All I want to do is buy jeans, not subscribe to your issue of Misanthropy Weekly. Either tell me what your issue is in plain words or get out.”

Mark’s mouth thins.

“Your human friends will ruin you,” he says, and then his teeth click shut.

Cool.

“That’s great,” Jack nods wisely, indulgent. Mark is going to be the death of him. “Really great, Mark. Glad you shared that little nugget of philosophy with me.”

Mark’s irritation only expands, a dark cloud of frustration settling over his features as Jack mocks him inadvertently.

“None of these people can bring you true happiness, Sean,” he insists, as though Jack had asked him to keep talking. “They will only seek to destroy you in the end, and the ones that can’t do so will abandon you. You deserve better.”

“Uh-huh.” Jack’s toes wriggle underneath the heavy fabric of Pants Option #2. “So tell me, what makes me different from the rest of humanity then? Aren’t I an abomination too, if everyone else is?”

Mark shakes his head vigorously, stepping closer to wrap his arms around Jack’s waist. Jack huffs out a breath in surprise as he’s tugged closer to Mark’s torso, and he glares up at his robot.

“You are different,” Mark murmurs quietly, eyes darkening further with something other than negativity. “You are mine to take care of, to direct. You are my livelihood, and I will not see you succumb to the whims of a race of fools.”

Jack’s hands fist in Mark’s shirt, and he swallows so hard he feels like there’s gravel in his throat.

“I thought you said you were almost human?” he questions, mouth dipping into a frown. “Just yesterday, you told me you were created to blend in with humans and live as though you were one of us. What changed?”

Mark’s gaze doesn’t waver. “Nothing’s changed,” he answers, fingers rubbing circles into the thin skin above Jack’s lower spine. “I am still me, but my kind—we were created to appear human, and to _excel_ them.”

“What?” Jack honestly cannot follow where this conversation is going. They’re pressed close together, nearly nose to nose in this musty 6x6 cage, and Mark’s whispering truths about the fallacies of humankind to him. “What the hell are you talking about, Mark?”

“I am telling you that I was created as an example of what humans could be without their flaws,” Mark says, hands warm and heavy on Jack’s skin. “I am what every person on this planet could be were they a little smarter, a little stronger, and a lot less self absorbed. That’s why I’m the only one who can make you happy, Sean. I was created specifically to do what they cannot, not even together.”

Jack’s head hurts. He really, really fucking wants to get out of here, and Mark’s talking in circles about pretentious shit. Those subconscious warning sirens are faint, but they’re still there, sounding off at the tone in Mark’s voice and the proprietary grip of his hands on Jack’s waist.

“I think we need to go home,” he replies, because here and now is not the place to deal with whatever Mark’s twisted philosophies on humanity and relationships are. “This is too much for me right now.”

Mark’s eyes soften, and he leans in just slightly.

“I’m still upsetting you, aren’t I?” he presses his forehead to Jack’s and makes an aggrieved noise. Jack almost feels sorry for him. “I don’t mean to, not at all. I need to make all this up to you.”

Jack runs a hand down Mark’s back, following the length of where his spine should be.

“You can make it up to me by letting me buy these jeans and taking me home,” he intones. It’s been a weird fucking morning, too weird for him to process anything properly without lunch and a good few days of avoiding the topic in his head before it comes back to bite him in the ass.

Mark still doesn’t let go of him, and he seems almost calmed by their proximity. He holds Jack like he’s trying to decide something for himself and he needs an anchor to stay grounded in the moment. It’s a strangely human thing to do, for all his carrying on about the pliancy of human emotions and devotion.

He seems to come to an agreement in his own head after a minute or so of silence, and Jack wonders if it’s his programming trying to process stimuli and sort itself out.

“We’ll go back home and I’ll watch after you,” Mark squeezes Jack’s hip, firm and possessive. “I don’t think it’s good for you to be out of the house so long. I don’t like seeing you so unsettled.”

_‘If I’m unsettled it’s because of your behavior,’_ Jack thinks, but doesn’t say. There’s no point to bringing it up, because it’ll only upset Mark more and lead him to try and correct himself in yet another erroneous fashion.

“That sounds good to me,” he says instead, letting out a breath. He needs to get better at picking and choosing his battles. “Just let me pay for at least one of these pairs of jeans and we can go, okay?”

“Affirmative.” Mark’s voice is agreeable, but the bruising press of his fingers into Jack’s side leaves a hollow pit in his stomach and a thump in his chest.

-.-

“Tell me what would happen if I ever decided to give you admin privileges,” Jack murmurs offhandedly one morning, days after their shopping debacle. “I’m curious.”

Mark breathes onto Jack’s scalp, warm and present, and Jack relishes in the near-silent hum of machinery inside Mark’s chest. He loves the way it sounds, like it’s Mark’s own unique heartbeat that can’t be replicated anywhere else.

“I wouldn’t need your permission to go outside, or to complete certain tasks,” Mark says on an afterthought. His voice is quiet. “I’d be fully autonomous, with no need for instructions in order to act, but I’d still serve you above all else.”

Jack considers that. He’s not sure if it’s a good idea at all, giving Mark that much free reign over his own body and time. He’s special, yes, and intelligent, but Jack likes being able to keep his own eye out for Mark and his actions.

There’s also the issue of Mark being…unsettling sometimes. His bias against humans and lack of interest in anything that isn’t Jack or his own freedom makes Jack queasy to say the least.

He wonders if Mark feels like a genie in a bottle, sworn to serve whoever his current owner may be, but shackled to his life of servitude without any hope of freedom on the horizon.

“Would you be happier if I gave you that permission?” It’s an honest question, one that’s been bouncing around in Jack’s head for awhile. He wants to know what actually makes Mark feel something close to joy, if anything at all. They’ve spent so much time in close quarters and still, Jack doesn’t know the limits of Mark’s emotional parameters.

Mark remains quiet, thinking. It’s something he’s been doing a lot more in the past few days. It occurs to Jack that the reason might be because Mark is more conflicted than ever, and his moments of silence are actually his system trying to form a coherent response.

“I do not know the limits of my own happiness,” Mark tells him, echoing Jack’s thoughts from earlier. “I can only know how much something pleases me by comparison to my prior experiences. Perhaps I am already at my happiest now, or perhaps tomorrow I will be proven wrong.”

Jack laughs, but it’s not mocking, or at least not too much. It’s too early to be an asshole.

“You’re philosophical in the mornings,” he remarks, tracing the stubble of Mark’s beard, amazed at how it prickles beneath his fingertips. “I don’t know if it’s cute or if it makes me want to go back to sleep.”

Mark lets him touch, stone still and soft beside him.

“You’re more agreeable when you’ve just woken up,” he observes, as if he’s just now choosing to share this revelation with Jack. “It’s refreshing for me in the grand scheme of things.”

He pauses for a moment, watching Jack marvel at the smoothness of his skin, the fine hairs littering his arms, and the heat emanating from his every pore.

“Also, you always seem more fascinated by me in the early mornings. I feel a bit like I’m on display.”

Jack presses down on Mark’s bicep and watches the tanned skin turn pale, then flood even darker than before. Mark has no blood or real veins inside him, Jack knows, but there must be effects in place to simulate both.

“Has anyone ever told you you’re a masterpiece?” he asks plaintively, because it’s true. For all that Mark’s misinformed on the nuances of human interactions, and a bit obsessed with Jack and his lack of a sex life, he’s a work of art.

Mark raises an eyebrow, loose with his surprise and his words at this hour. Mornings must have some effect on him as well, or maybe it’s just Jack’s influence.

“I’ve never spoken to anyone but you,” he replies, and Jack’s stricken with the realization that it’s true. “So no, no one has ever told me. You’re the first.”

He has no idea what to do with that information.

“I want to give you your autonomy,” Jack switches the subject back without any warning. He has to get this off his chest. “I want you to be able to make your own decisions, but I’m afraid of what that means for you.”

“Do you not trust me?” Mark cuts right to the chase, smoothing back Jack’s hair and looking at him seriously. “It is not within my power to hurt you, Sean. I would not leave or betray you. You are safe with me no matter what your decision.”

Jack presses his face into Mark’s neck.

“I know that,” he breathes. He’s strangely content to let Mark hold him here in bed, as though they’re lovers committed to one another. “I’m not afraid of what you’ll do to me, just that I won’t ever be able to change your mind.”

Mark’s hand cards through his hair, tugging it upwards so that it defies gravity and sticks out in ten different directions.

“About what?” he asks patiently. “My mind contains a vast amount of information, but I am still capable of learning and growing. I am not a stagnant machine.”

“That’s just it.” Jack sighs heavily. He’s already addicted to being able to touch someone else whenever he wants. It feels like giving in. “You’re so human sometimes, and yet you’re… _not_.”

“Yes?” Mark prompts. He’s confused again, but his fingers still tangle in Jack’s hair.

“If I give you that permission, what will you do with it?” Jack asks, glad he doesn’t have to look directly into Mark’s eyes as he says it. “It’s just…you worry me sometimes, Mark.”

The hand moves to cup the back of Jack’s neck. Mark rolls until Jack’s beneath him, dark eyes glinting, and the position feels eerily familiar.

“Is that why you turned me off last week?” he asks, resting so that Jack’s not crushed beneath his weight. Breathing is still a little hard, for some reason. “Because you were afraid of me?”

Jack had processed—and avoided processing—as much angst as humanly possible over those two lonely weeks about exactly this, and he knows he’s to blame for his hesitations more than anything.

Mark is uncanny and intense to a fault, always making vague statements about things Jack doesn’t understand and staring at Jack as though he’s a bug under a microscope. There’s something…off about him, but Jack had kicked himself more than once for being worried about that when he knew he’d been forewarned that Mark might be a bit glitchy.

He’s a robot for fuck’s sake, and his personality isn’t as flawless as his looks. There are moments when Jack catches him staring and Mark will smile, like they’re flirting from across the room in secret. It’s those moments that make him astoundingly human, even if it’s just for a few seconds at a time.

Then there are other times, like in the mall, when Mark looks at people like he’s picturing them with their hands on Jack and he’s thinking about twisting their heads off in retaliation. Jack can’t reconcile that Mark with the one who makes him food and wants to cuddle for no reason, just because he’s bored and he hasn’t touched Jack in at least an hour.

It’s hard for Jack to put his trust in someone so inconsistent, but Mark is doing his best, he thinks. He doesn’t have a human soul or a human brain, just a supercomputer in his head and skin synthesized to be soft enough to fool Jack into wanting to cuddle him back.

“I’m not afraid of you,” Jack decides aloud. Mark smiles at him, but he continues. “You’re kind of freaky and obsessive and just a little on the extreme side, but I’m not scared of you. I’m scared of how you’ll handle the real world if I let you out into it.”

Mark’s smile dims a little, but he doesn’t move away.

“Is this because of our outing the other day, then?” he asks, searching Jack’s face. “You don’t think I can be trusted around other humans at all?”

Jack shrugs. “I mean, I want you to have your freedom because I think it might make you more human, maybe? I know you’re smart enough to do plenty of stuff without having to ask me and I want to see more of your personality, not just who you are when you feel like you have to clean something for me.”

Something appears to dawn on Mark’s face, because his eyes go half lidded and he rests his chin on Jack’s chest.

“You want more from me?” he says, but the lilt at the end makes it a question. “You want me to be human?”

Jack blinks and glances away. “I don’t know, kind of? I know you’re not, not really, but you’re right about what you said earlier. You’re not just a machine, you’re something a million times better.”

He bites his lip and wraps his arms around Mark’s back, taking a deep breath and letting it out.

“If I’m going to keep you with me, I want to make the most of what we can do,” he continues. “Using you as a maid feels a little like turning solid gold into a paperweight. If you can be more, I think you should.”

Mark’s smile is back, and it’s a little crooked and soft, like he’s not quite sure what Jack’s point is, but he likes the direction this is going.

“What do you want me to be?” he murmurs, and Jack shakes his head, poking him on the nose.

“What do _you_ want to be?” he asks.

Mark’s eyes go unfocused for a moment, seeing somewhere past Jack, or maybe just listening to the stream of information rushing through his head.

“I don’t know,” he replies, and he’s hesitant to answer. “I want to make you happy and keep you safe. Isn’t that enough?”

“You’re sweet,” Jack tells him, though he knows Mark’s programming is likely taking precedence here. “Your mind needs a bit of an expansion pack, but you’re sweet.”

Mark beams at that, and it’s almost puppy-like. Jack laughs.

“Give me some time to think about it,” he offers, though he can feel his head being swayed. He wants to do it, craves the idea of Mark being able to act freely without his say, but something is sticking in his brain. It’s too big of a decision to make on a whim before breakfast, and Mark’s got some kind of voodoo in his eyes when he’s laying this close to Jack. It messes with his head.

“You’ll give me what I want one way or another,” Mark’s eyes flash, working that risky magic and twisting Jack’s guts up into knots. “I’m glad they sent me to you, Sean. If I could have picked my own administrator, I’d have picked you.”

“Shut up.” Jack swats at him and blushes. He could get used to this. “Flattery will get you absolutely nowhere.”

He wants to get up and eat, but the bed is too warm and it’s the first time in ages that lying in and doing nothing has felt comfortable instead of bleak. Mark hasn’t even made mention of wanting to fuck him into the mattress yet, although Jack’s sure that little thought is floating somewhere close to the surface.

They lay there in companionable silence and Mark pets his hair, the seconds ticking away at the morning light.

“I promise I’ll make this worth your while,” Mark whispers after some time. “I’ll make you happier than anyone else ever could, no matter what it takes.”

Jack wants to tell him how that’s not necessary, but he keeps his mouth shut. There’s only so much that he can do to change Mark’s mind, and right now he’s content not to ask any more questions.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading, and sorry for the lack of smut. I know I said this was going to be a bad porno with almost no plot, and it's still a bad porno, but a tiny bit of plot is creeping up on me and sucking out my entire soul. My apologies.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading, and tell me what you think so far! This is a bit different than anything I've written recently, so I'd love to hear your comments and opinions! Much love. <3

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Programmed to Assist](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7602085) by [AdorabloodthirstyKitty](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AdorabloodthirstyKitty/pseuds/AdorabloodthirstyKitty)




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